Part IX: Around the World in 80 Days

By Temple Ligon
March 28, 2014 

When I was told by the Indian consulate in Rome that my approved visa to take the train across India would be in my hands by Wednesday, April 4, 2012, a week away, Passepartout #2 agreed to our Roman rendezvous from Good Friday through the weekend. She planned to return to New York on Monday following Easter.  And in another two days following Passepartout’s departure, I would be street legal and free to travel in India after almost two weeks applying for my visa through the hassle and unexpected delays from the consulate staff.
 
As it turned out, I was emailed by the Indian consulate on the day I was supposed to pick up my visa. They told me to drop by the next afternoon after five o’clock but before closing time a half-hour later. I had one more night in the Hotel Albergo Abruzzi overlooking the Pantheon in the Piazza della Rotonda, and I had one more night in the Eternal City to investigate another great rooftop restaurant. Can’t complain, can I?
 
After accepting my invitation from her office in New York, Passpartout #2 asked me to score opera tickets for whatever was playing, but no opera was scheduled for Easter weekend. By checking the Rome opera offerings, I did discover the availability of an opera concert, and I reserved two seats. Then I took care of myself for the Thursday night before Passepartout #2’s arrival. I bought a box seat at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. I paid about $200.
 
In a look at New York City for something comparable in the Metropolitan Opera House, this Saturday’s performance has sold out of its box seats at $871 each, but they do still have two seats in the back of the orchestra section at $367 each. Rome, clearly, is the better deal.
 
Then in Columbia, the Palmetto Opera’s performance of Carmen recently sold tickets for $46 anywhere in the orchestra section of the Koger Center. Columbia, clearly, is the better deal.
 
On the other hand, the opera intermission in Rome was the most fun with the best bar service and the best crowd. Had a grand time.
 
While I was spinning my wheels in Rome trying to get Indian consulate approval for my visa application, I had to beg off my reserved spot on the French freighter I was to meet in Malta. Taking two weeks instead of the anticipated two days for my visa application in Rome, I had to reconsider everything in my schedule to circumnavigate the globe in a Phileas Fogg fashion inside of 80 days.
 
As an alternate route, I paid for a Russian visa, 17-23 April, to take the Transsiberian Railway all across the country to Beijing. The only concession in my favor I heard was that I did not need a visa to cross Mongolia. But I did anticipate problems with countries between central Europe and Russia, problems that might make the Indian consulate in Rome look fast and efficient.
 
The whole idea was to stay close to the ground since Fogg traveled close to the ground in 1872. I was trying to avoid air travel, something of a personal policy.  Also, I really wanted to trace Fogg’s footsteps. He took a train all the way down the Italian boot to Brindisi, where he boarded a boat for the Suez Canal. After hammering the gold spike in the America’s transcontinental railway and spiking the final rail on the ties crossing India between Bombay and Calcutta and the opening of the Suez Canal, the world had become a whole lot smaller for Fogg, building his confidence in finishing the trip in less than 80 days. And, to stay close to Jules Verne, none of all that had anything to do with Russia.
 
I had to violate my personal policy and buy a plane ticket to get me from Rome to Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and to keep me on schedule. I flew out of Rome around noon on Thursday, April 12, suffered one transfer and arrived in Mumbai at four the next morning.
 
I thought it prudent to take my first afternoon in Mumbai on a walk to the train station, just to get an idea of prices and availability – and it get an idea of India.
 
The train station was only about a mile from the hotel, and the world’s best taxi deals were all over anyone walking out from the Taj Mahal Palace. The cheapest offer was 60 rupees, about $1.20. How is that possible? Is fuel subsidized by the government? I don’t know. All I know is the Mumbai taxis are dirt cheap.
 
The first trip to the train station, though, was on foot. I had never seen such a mass of humanity, so many people moving about in such a tight space. One enterprising fellow had four clients sitting on the curb getting their ears cleaned out. Another shaved one client at a time while another massaged the arms and legs during the shave.  This and more went on all along the curb on every block everywhere.
 
When I walked into the train station, a huge decorative Victorian job put up by the Brits, I wasn’t sure how to negotiate my way through the mob. I finally got some directions and went upstairs to the foreigners’ ticket windows. There I was told India was about to go through a national holiday beginning the next morning. The national government made available cheap train trips to everybody, and the gesture was good for citizens only, not us foreigners.
 
I asked if I should know a strategic time to return the next day, and no one offered to help. I walked back downstairs past the same three almost-dead men clinging to the landing of the marble steps. Even more prevalent in permanent positions were the dogs. I never saw the cows I remembered from grade-school films, but I saw napping dogs and almost-dead dogs all over the place.
 
Back at the Taj, as the locals called it, I walked through the restaurants on the ground floor. Each one appeared to be first-rate and each one was already full. I asked for a table in the Chinese restaurant, and I was on record for a table for one in an hour. Meanwhile, the hotel had as many bars and it had restaurants, and the bars were crowded.
 
The connection with Britain was still pretty apparent, such as the architecture, and I had to assume Bombay Sapphire was at every barback. I ordered a very dry Martini, straight up with one olive, the way it all began. I wasn’t too worried, although the worst Martini I every had was in a sorry steak house near Harrod’s. What the hell. When Martinis are good, they are very good; and when Martinis are bad, they’re good.
 
So I had my good Martini or two and took my table to order Chinese in.
 
Dinner with myself set me up for a little reflection on what I had been doing since a month earlier in the Carlyle Hotel. I was at the one-third point in my 80-day doings.
 
I had managed to miss the Mediterranean altogether. I let my freighter get by. I flew, damn it all.
 
How can I claim to be a citizen of the world and miss the Mediterranean? Never been anywhere on the Mediterranean and I am past sixty.
 
I got it. The Odyssey was more than two thousand years ago, something like 1100 BCE, and Homer told the tale in 750 BCE, they still guess. Odysseus took ten years in the Trojan Way and another ten getting home to Ithaca and to his wife Penelope, and by doing so he sailed the width and the length of the Mediterranean.
 
And there you have it. Sail the Odyssey. Make up for lost sea.
 
Let’s resume my coverage of getting around the world in 80 days, but let’s keep in mind what has to happen – what trip is next.

To be continued…) 

Reach Temple at – [email protected]