Ouch...

The receptionist at my hotel saw me totally hopeless, asked me what's wrong, told him and I felt 0.5% better, so here I am, hoping that telling everyone about it will make me feel at least 2% better... Here's the case, people: my backpack got lost. Up to a while ago I had the hope that it had ended up at Sydney (why Sydney? Loooong stupid Gulf Air story), but nope, it's officially lost. What now? Well, I have money with me, I have my passport, my tickets, so I'll do the only thing I CAN do... Go shop, the very basics, get a new backpack and basically I am going to try and repair my all crashed -at the moment- wings... There is nothing more I can do, is there? You know what's funny, in a... sick way? :-) A few days before flying to Mumbai I met Elena, a Cypriot girl studying in Greece, who came to Thessaloniki to meet a doctor and get info concerning her trip to India in February. I remember telling her that I didn't even want to think about having my luggage lost. What I had in mind was not 'lost', but 'delayed', I was thinking what would happen in case I arrived at Mumbai Friday morning and somehow my luggage ended up somewhere else. It WOULD be a problem, because yesterday midday I was flying again, from Mumbai to Hyderabad, so I would have to face the dilemma, "what do I do now? Do I lose the ticket (low cost airline, non refundable) and wait at Mumbai until my luggage arrives, sending my itinerary to the dustbin, or take the flight and let them send the luggage to Hyderabad when they find it?" Back then, I was thinking that this was the worst thing that could happen, have my luggage delayed for 24 hours, risking to turn my itinerary to pieces. The idea of having my luggage lost-lost had not crossed my mind...Then, I remember Elena saying that even if my luggage got lost, I would only lose stuff, and we can't be too attached to stuff... True :-) (bitter smile). They were only stuff, but first of all, they were ALL the stuff I was meant to have for 25 days with me in India, and second some of those stuff were sentimentally important to me, they were something like 'pals' of mine, and now... they are gone. Another funny thing is that along with me there was a Belgian yesterday at Mumbai airport, who had her luggage lost too. She is a yoga teacher, and she told me that in case she was told that her luggage was lost for good, she would try to practice the same self-control she teaches her class, but deep down she admitted that she would be "REALLY pissed", so... give me a break here... if a yoga teacher gets pissed when she loses her luggage, I think I have the right myself to get pissed... :-)
Well-well-well... I do feel a little better now that I told everyone what's the case... I'm going to see the Charminar, Hyderabad's landmark, a structure I fell in love with the first time I saw it in a photo, and then I'm going shopping. Then, in the afternoon, I want to stroll around the artificial lake separating Hyderabad and Secunderabad, another thing I had in mind doing here from the day I decided to include Hyderabad in my itinerary. Then, my hotel may not be super, but a decent room will be waiting for me, hot water is something they DO have (checked, yesterday), the bed is... weird :-) but clean enough, I'll get some sleep, and tomorrow will be a new day, one that will find me with a new backpack and new stuff in it, ready to see a little of Hyderabad again before taking the afternoon train to Chennai... What the heck... After all, they were only stuff... Worse things can happen in life than losing all your stuff the first of a 25 days' trip to India... :-) I salute everyone, and I hope that next time I drop some lines here, from Chennai, I won't sound so pathetic... :-)
PS My Athens-Bahrain Gulf Air flight got cancelled the day before yesterday, so Gulf Air set me up with Middle East Airlines for the Athens-Beirut sector (from Beirut I could catch another flight to Bahrain and be there in time for my Bahrain-Mumbai flight). On the MEA plane they had a Lebanese newspaper called 'The Daily..." something, I took a look, reached the last page with the horoscopes, checked it out of curiosity, and under Scorpio they wrote "blah-blah-blah, but luck is with you today". Call me sarcastic and nasty, but some Lebanese MUST lose his job... :-)