“All hand luggage should go into the cargo hold” – The message from British Airways and the UK travel security agency was clear… I was supposed to travel out of India in less than 24 hours, when the Scotland Yard stopped a terrorist attempt… It seamed like this was about to become a trip to remember and I sill had lots of stuff to finish at the office…

My first reaction was to concentrate on the tasks I had to finish… I needed to keep by mind focused on something in order to detract what would be happening in the following hours…

I asked fro some help from the main office but I knew in advance that in times like these we end up having to count only on what the present holds… For some time I stopped writing, because to a certain extent I just could not organize my thoughts in order to do so…

In previous posts I mentioned two very important issues: one was that when traveling there are three very important things that we should always take care of (passport, plane ticket and credit cards) the other was that life keeps pushing our limits and even when we think that we can’t stand things anymore we discover that our capacity to adapt is always there to surprise us…

Well to put a long story short, these where the two realities that I’ve been facing ever since I left India…

As instructed I place all my possessions in my big suitcase (yes, including camera, lenses, laptop, cell phone, glasses, you name it!)… I traveled through London Heathrow under red alert and had to get rid of the two issues of the outdoor photographer magazine I was carrying along with my note book and pen… I finally understood what was to be left with noting else than those I consider the essential items for a trip...

My connecting flight was canceled and I spent several hours without knowing when and if there would be a flight to carry me home… After some hours it seamed I was lucky and there was an almost empty plane taking me home… After landing I waited several hours for my suitcase to arrive, but it didn’t…

Has you might imagine my humor was not in the best shape during the following days… I still do not know what’s worse: the idea to loose my photo equipment or the idea that my next trip is near and I need to make decisions fast in order to keep going…

The suitcase was finally found and delivered to my home after five long days…

During this long process and the long waiting hours at the airport I had time to rethink some of my traveling concepts like: after the tree essentials, a pen is the most important item (you need it to fill the lost baggage claim forms when you get to your destination), and after this, cell phones or any means that enable you to communicate with your family, friends or event your company also come quite handy. In this case, the British government did not give me much chance regarding having any of these items with me, the Airport in Lisbon didn’t help either as they did not have pens to lend and most payphones did not work…

Life goes on and in tree weeks I’ll be flying to Canada on holydays… Guess who am I flying with?... Hint: there are no direct flights from Lisbon to Vancouver and I’ll have to transfer somewhere in Europe…