Lusaka-Kigali-Addis Abeba-Mumbai-Bengaluru

Our flight from Africa to India was a unique experience for us. I'll try to explain it. 1. Booking - We booked the Ethiopian Air flight Lusaka-Bangalore, Goa-Entebbe in Switzerland prior to departure. Everything went just perfect. 2. Flight confirmation - Typically we don't reconfirm flights these days (haven't done it for yeras) but somehow we felt like we should do it this time. Luckily we did and our travel agent warned us that there was a change in the flight schedule and we would miss the connection in Addis (thanks Carina @ Globetrotter). 3. Re-booking - With this information we headed to the Ethiopian Air office in Lusaka to re-book our flight. A small office with about 20 people waiting in front of us. After waiting about half an hour and seeing no progress (while the office door said it would close in 20 min) I asked the lady and said "Sorry, we have an urgent topic, could you please take care of it?". She "When is your flight?" and me again "Tomorrow, that's why it's urgent" and she replied with a smile "all the other people here will fly today, don't worry...". We eventually talked to a lady but she didn't know of any change in the flight schedule... . With local help (thanks Peter) we tried it through a travel agent and got the confirmation that we would have to spent a night in Addis due to the change. 4. Check-in We agreed that a night in Addis would be no problem as we planed backup days for such situations. With that in mind we went to the check in and told the lady that we knew about the change and that check in to Addis only would be ok. She looked a bit strange at us when we told her that and she said "No problem, I checked in many passengers to Mumbai today, the plane will wait for you". 5. Lusaka - Kigali - Addis Abeba With boarding passes all the way to India we entered the plane. The pilot informed us that instead of flying directly to Addis Abeba (Ethiopia) we would do a stop over in Kigali (Rwanda) to pick up some passengers. That's what we did and obviously we arrived late in Addis and the plane to Mumbai was gone. 6. Nice hotel & upgrade That wasn't a problem at all as we were a group of about 25 people (23 Indians on the way home and 2 Swiss...). Ethiopian Airlines organized a Visa for us, booked us a nice hotel in Addis and even gave us an Upgrade to Business class for the flight to Mumbai. As you can imagine we enjoyed a nice day in Addis before tasting local Ethiopian food with Martini in Ethiopian Airlines Buiness class... (luckily they made this stop over in Kigali)