Lack of Sleep, Hallucinations and What Not!

Most of my trips are short, that is the only way I can travel a lot with a full time job. The day I come back, usually the very next day I am at work. If I arrive at 1.00 am in the morning, I am at work by 9.30 am. If I arrive at 4.35 am in the morning, I am still at work at 9.30 the same day. To me leaves are precious and I try to save them as much as I can. You can imagine what this does to my sleep pattern. Lack of sleep is a part (or certainly was a part) of my daily life. On top of it I am not one of those blessed souls who can survive on 3-4 hours of sleep. I need 7-8 hours of sleep to feel like a human being. In fact more sleep was one of my new year resolutions for this year. I am faring much better than last year but you decide in the end.

3. When the Wheels Touched: While coming back from Finland I watched back to back movies on the Munich-Delhi flight. I have this addiction of watching movies on a flight, I do not like to sleep at all. Some people cannot sleep on a flight, I don’t know if I am one of them, I really never tried. On all long haul flights I simply watch movies. There were one and a half hours left for this flight. I decided to listen to music. There was one Hindi music channel which I started listening. The next thing I knew was the PA system saying “Welcome to Indira Gandhi International Airport.” I slept through all the noise of the plane landing!

2. Hallucinating: When I traveled to Pench my trips had early morning flights and early morning safaris. As my first tiger sighting happened on this trip, I am willing to do it again, heck I would do such a hectic trip even if I didn’t sight a tiger. For my 7.00 ish morning flight from Nagpur I had a 3.00 am start from Nagpur. The taxi owner offered me to check-in at his lodge in Nagpur as I would arrive an hour early for the flight. His lodge was next to the airport. On the way I fell asleep. When I woke up closer to Nagpur, the driver said, “madam bhaut thak gyae hain” (madam must be really tired) I suspect I was snoring away to glory. At the lodge, as promised, I was given a  room. I somehow wandered to the edge of the balcony and it was not protected. Sensing danger, I became alert … and I woke up. This scenario was so real, it took me a while to figure out that I was safe inside a room and I was just hallucinating! But that really scared me.

1. Delay in Recognizing the Paradise: I have been completely smitten by Maldives. However, both my nephew and I were so sleep deprived when we arrived there. At first glance, both of us were underwhelmed by Maldives! Things lack of sleep can do to your brain! My nephew works really long hours and he was falling asleep on the chair while we waited for dinner on the first evening. I too was cranky. At the island no one is ever in a  hurry. So while it took them an eternity to serve the meal (or was it us who felt that way?), we gobbled it up in a few minutes. We both crashed in early that day. By the second day we discovered the paradise with our new set of eyes!

And if you thought I was being dramatic, I heard someone say they can get so sleep deprived that they have blacked out on trips!