It was so nice to sleep in a normal bed again, one that has a mattress that's thicker than 1cm!

The only downside was a room service guy waking me up at 2 am to give me some tea ... that someone 3 floors below had ordered! Idiot! Room 404 vs 106 ... yes, I can see how you'd get those mixed up!

Woke up early again as the light was coming straight in above the curtains. Not sure why they make rooms like this but I had to get up soon anyway so it wasn't a big deal.

My taxi driver as on time & was driven by a guy who works at the hotel full-time then drives his brother's taxi part-time.

That's good as he already knew me a little & his English was pretty good.

The airport is about 40km away. So in Australia, you'd probably allow 20-30min to get there. India is a different story however so I allowed 1:15 to get there because I know how bad the roads are!

They seem to often dig a channel across the road to lay pipes or something but then they never go back & re-seal the road! So every few hundred metres you have a section of road that's just gravel & has now developed into a pothole that's big enough to swallow the tiny cars most people drive.

About 10min into the trip, we pulled over on the side on the road. "I must go to temple," he says. OK ... I guess I'll just wait here then & hope I don't miss my plane because you want to go to temple!

It was as only a few minutes but felt like about 20 as I was already feeling rushed, wanting to get to the airport early since I was anticipating difficulties due to all the extra baggage I had.

Still, with the way Indian people drive, I can see why you'd want to pray at the start of every journey!

A short while later, the driver asked whether I'd like to listen to some music. OK sure. So again we pull off to the side of the road so he can connect his phone via a dodgy cable to his dusty car stereo.

If I'd known we'd have to stop just to turn the music on, I would have said no!

After all the various delays, we arrived at the airport, roughly when I'd anticipated: about an hour before my flight was due to take off.

I don't know what they'd do if it was a busy day because every step took about twice as long as a normal airport.

Scanning my checked bag took ages as they had to put it through twice, check-in was pretty normal, had to wait for security to open, but then they only let one person into security screening at a time because they make you basically unpack your entire bag: laptop, phones, camera, plus every single other electronic item you're carrying ... they all have to be taken out & scanned separately. Strangely, they weren't as interested in liquids & gels however they were convinced that my USB stick was a lighter plus I also had to dismantle one of my pens! A bit of overkill!

You also have to make sure you keep your passport & boarding pass with you as you have to show the guy who individually scans you after you pass through the main scanner.

Lastly, there's one extra random check on the way to board the plane, where yet another guy goes through all your stuff.

Maybe they're spending all this extra time to justify their existence because the plane is probably only about 25-30% full.

We took off mostly on time & it's so nice to fly over everything rather than take forever on the crappy roads. For comparison, it's a 40min flight to Chandigarh or about 12 hours by bus! You get the picture.

For the first part of the trip, we were flying down the valleys as it takes quite a while to reach the altitude where you can actually fly over the mountains.

If I come back to do another trek, I want to find one that starts near an airport so I can fly into somewhere close & not have to spend forever on the roads.

Still, I feel very privileged. I get to hop on a plane & leave all the crappy buildings, half-broken streets & ever-present pollution behind. I don't have to live in it, fighting just to survive every day.

We landed in Chandigarh, disembarked, & then I made my way through the airport to an un-signposted lift guarded by a military guy (they're everywhere at Indian airports), which took me up to the departures area.

It felt kind of strange that I was here just 10 days ago as so much has happened since then! It's like I've come back to the start.

After unpacking my carry-on bags again, passing security again, then repacking them, I made my way to the business lounge, where you can relax, recharge your devices & enjoy a buffet lunch, all for $12.

I thought it would be like most other lounges in that they'd provide WiFi but no, you can connect to the free, dial-up speed airport WiFi ... provided you have an Indian mobile, of course, otherwise, it's BYO internet.

The guy sitting across the table from me kindly let me use his number to get the PIN I needed to access the WiFi but that connection dropped out after about 10min plus it was painfully slow.

I asked one of the wait staff & at first, he offered to lend me his number. That was incredibly slow however so he lent me his entire phone so I could hotspot off it for both my laptop & phone.

I offered to give him something for using his data but he declined. Very kind of him to do this for me, however!

The flight to Delhi was delayed by 2 hours for some reason. It doesn't bother me though as today, I'm just waiting in airports so it doesn't matter which airport I wait in. My next flight is at 11 pm tonight through Hong Kong to Seoul, Korea.

We eventually took off from Chandigarh and I think I napped a bit on the plane as the trip seemed to go very quickly and then we were landing in Delhi.

I collected my bag and was about to go through the transfer section to get to the international terminal when I spotted a lounge I could access. So I went in there instead and used their free Internet & refreshments (no food, unfortunately) but I also don't need a boarding pass!

I repacked my bag as I now have up to 30kg of baggage allowed for my trip to Seoul. I also did a little research on Seoul to see if there's anything I should do while I'm there for 8 hours. Might as well do something interesting rather than sit in an airport for that long.

There are free transit tours of the city that you can do but since none that I'm interested in are leaving in the afternoon, I decided to visit Seoul on my own. The Gyeongbokgung palace looks interesting & reasonably easy to get to so I'm thinking I'll aim to go there, plus visit the sky tower.

I'm pretty sure I'm the first person the Delhi girl has ever spoken to that has wanted to fly from Delhi to the Marshall Islands. I'm also pretty sure that she'd never even heard of Marshall Islands before as she seemed to think it was part of the US so I'd need a visa to visit there. I reassured her that it was a separate country and that I can get a visa on arrival at both Marshall Islands and South Korea and then to my amazement, she said she was able to check my bag all the way through to the Marshall Islands!

She issued my boarding pass from Delhi to Seoul and off I went. I asked her for a window seat as I was planning to sleep for most of the trip but instead, she gave me an aisle seat. Urgh! They're the worst on overnight trips because everyone walking past you bumps you and wakes you up. Oh well, nothing I can do about it now.