What a lovely environment in which to spend the best six hours of the day … Dabolim Airport. First, the flight experienced its usual delay, then they had to replace a wheel because of a puncture before we boarded. An instrument fault will be repaired in 15 … 30 … 40 minutes. No it won’t, we’ll have to wait for a spare part on the next flight, so would we all please “deplane”! One mass, but orderly deplane later, we queued for lunch boxes. The girl at the Indian Airlines desk was rather more interested in chatting to her male colleagues than me, so the only help I got was the lugubrious information that we’d missed our connection in Bombay, to Varanasi. On paper, she was correct, but the header will have given the game away. 4½ hours late, we duly left Goa, and by a similar margin, arrived in Bombay. I was not hopeful of an immediate rescheduling to Delhi, but decided we should cut our losses, if our slack time was to be thus eroded. We’d already ditched a stopover in Kajuraho (of erotic temple fame) because, despite as-positive-as-possible assurances that we would get on, we had been standbys 1 and 2 for over a week. However, against expectation, the Varanasi flight was also delayed and Indian Airline staff were magnificent, speeding us through, as if we were their cousins or on a hefty bribe. Astonishing. So City of Pilgrims (as the postcards say - sic) here we are, contracted to a hussler for an early start tomorrow.