We were indeed sad to leave Europe, and particularly Rome. But all good things must come to an end and soon it was time to move on.
We left our lodgings around 4 in the afternoon on the 13th October. It was just as we were leaving the place that we met our son's classmate and her husband (briefly mentioned in the previous episode). As we were booked on a train leaving for the airport soon, we bade farewell to them quickly and hurriedly walked over to Ottaviano station to catch a train to Termini, from where we were to go to Rome's Fiumicino airport by another train. Though we reached the airport very much ahead of of time, we were very carelesss and reported to the check-in counter rather late. For some reason there was an unusually large crowd of passengers that day, departing to various parts of the world, and the staff at the airport seemed unable to cope with the work load. Progress was painfully slow and even ten minutes before take-off, we were still in the queue! It seemed certain that we would miss the the Qatar Airways flight to Doha and the connecting flight to Manama.
Just then Providence intervened in the form of a young girl who suddenly appeared on the scene like an angel. Like us she too was waiting impatiently in line, chafing at the delay. Though I (and Simmy) had tried to persuade the authorities to let us in because our flight was about to take off, they would not budge. The girl however, suddenly decided that she had had enough. She aggressively broke the queue, went forward, argued with the person on duty, and was soon cleared. Somehow she persuaded them to clear us also, and soon we were charging through the labyrinthine corridors of Fiumicino, to catch the in-house train within the airport which would take us to the tarmac. While doing so, I noticed that she was calling someone intermittently on the mobile, asking them to hold on and telling them that she was on her way. She soon revealed the secret of her success with the airport authorities; apparently she was an off-duty Air Hostess with Qatar Airlines! And luckily for us she decided to befriend us, thereby enabling us too to catch the flight.
She seemed to be a very nice person, even carrying Simmy's hand-baggage during our sprint to the plane. All that we could gather about her was that she was Tunisian, her name was Unns (or something like that), she had an Italian boy-friend, and that her mother was a French teacher back home in Tunisia.
We had a two-hour wait at Doha. As it was early morning, I thought of having some coffee at the restaurant. And that's when I discovered the pathetic purchasing power of the Indian rupee. The girl at the counter told me disinterestedly that two cups of coffee would cost only one thousand rupees! On hearing this, we hastily decided to forego the coffee.
Sonny (Simmy's brother) and his wife Leeli were at the airport to receive us and we were soon enjoying a fabulous Kerala lunch at their beautiful apartment in Manama. After almost two months of bland European food, it felt heavenly to dig into some spicy Indian dishes.
We spent more than a week in Bahrain with them and enjoyed every moment of our stay. Sonny and Leeli were lavish hosts and entertained us regally. They took us all around Bahrain and we got to see (and travel) on the Causeway linking Bahrain with Saudi Arabia, the Bahrain Race Track, the Grand Mosque, the National Museum and many other places. And above all, we got to eat some great food and drink some exotic beverages, including champagne. They also entertained us at the Royal Golf Club to an enormous buffet lunch, where, much to my surprise, alcohol and pork were openly served!
Bahrain marked the end of our long holiday, and we were back in Cochin on the 23rd October 2013, after a wonderful, enjoyable, exciting and occasionally adventurous sojourn in Europe.
