6.3.26

I finally got to sleep around 3am last night, I physically and mentally couldn’t cope anymore with finding possible flights out of India.

At 6.45 am I was wide awake and continued the search.

Chat gpt has been my best friend whilst building my website but I’m disillusioned now because so many of their suggestions for routes are so inaccurate. I jot down the ideas and cross them off one by one. I know they’re still learning. Once I find a route that works I’ll let them know. It’s doable, it must be.

We have to be out of our apartment tomorrow by 10am. We went to look at an apartment on the same complex. Lovely. Sparkly clean compared to the one we’re in now.

The rest of the morning was spent trying to contact Indigo to let them know that we won’t be checking in for our Goa to Delhi flight as the Delhi to Istanbul flight is cancelled.

I’ve emailed, phoned, whatsapped,facebook messaged and messaged via X but got nowhere contacting them. I’m hoping we don’t end up as a ‘no show’ as I’m worried our refund should we need it could be cancelled or worse they think we’ve left and take us off their system. I’m just going round and round in frustrating circles.

Around 11am the others decided to go to the pool. My head was banging, I couldn’t cope with the idea of more heat.

I decided to stay in the bedroom with the sir con and paracetamol and watch something trashy to empty my brain. Yayyyy, Married at First Sight Australia. Praise the Lord!

Omg, it’s going to be an explosive series. Loving it already.

I fell asleep before the end of the first episode. What felt like minutes later John rang me with great excitement. There was a flight from Delhi about to land in İstanbul. He sent me the link. I looked it up. Over 1500 pounds. Not an option.

Friends message and say go this route or that route. What they need to do is put them in a basket and discover they’re a) not available, b) go via UAE or c) only for the very rich!!

Scrolled back to where I’d got to in Mafs, was dozing and the others were back and Liz needed some bits from the room. It was 5.30pm by now so time to get up anyway. The banging headache hadn’t gone.

We were all determined no more flight searching and later set off to Cedrous. We enquired about poppadoms.. Yes we have. Oooh. Masala or plain? Masala please. The others loved them. For me my worst nightmare as covered in tiny bits of fresh tomato’s.

I had the paneer labradoodle again, this time with honey chilli chips. Great flavour, but soggy, will stick to cheese garlic naans. You just can’t go wrong with those. Actually not quite true, have had the odd one where they’ve put huge chunks of garlic on. Not the greatest experience when you bite into one of those.

Another friend sent info about going via Kyrgyzstan. Hmmm. Well we’ve tried everything else….

So.. Goa to Delhi, Delhi to Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyzstan to İstanbul. We sat checking the individual routes. Sadly nothing til 22nd March, but we have nothing else in the pipeline. Gulf Air have done nothing for Kevin and Sharon and Liz and I are a ‘no show’ because despite every effort we couldn’t decline them.

We got to the payment stage.

None of our cards would would work with Tezjet. We consistently put details in and just returned to payment page.

It was 1am by now. The others went to bed while Liz and I tried to take chat gpts advice of booking through a ticketing app.

Got as far as payment. Sorry our system is overloaded please try later.

Another past 2am attempt to switch my brain off.

I’m so done with being here.

The rubbish, stinky fish laying around to dry, some poor dogs sunburnt literally to a crisp, others with severe mange, hassle from beach ladies & shop owners was all OK for a limited time.

Now I feel as if this could be my life for months. Worse than anything is there’s nowhere to go, nothing to do other than sleep on a sunbed on the beach or at the pool.

At least I did go off for a day to Panjim and Goa Old Town, Liz and I went to Margao and to Mumbai for 2 days.

I managed far better than I expected and have really enjoyed it, but I’m so bored of it now.

I want my husband, my dog and cats, a stroll into Fethiye, meet up with friends, go rambling, do my Turkish lessons and do my hobbies.

The saving grace here is the food. It’s fabulous.

Oh woe is me. I’m officially 65, not even receiving a pension for 2 more years and entitled to be grumpy.