One Year of Reality and How It Nearly Killed Me: My Life Behind the Scenes (13 page)

Being on the plane to our next destination with nothing to do was the only relief I had until we arrived in India.

I was so looking forward to going to India. For three years on
Wild Things
I had worked with two
of the facilitators via phone from India. I enjoyed speaking to them and had always hoped to meet them one day. So the prospect of finally meeting them in person was exciting. But my good mood quickly expired when we arrived at the airport and the India staff gathered our passports. For a moment I panicked. Why are they taking them from us? Then I remembered that of course they were supposed to take them—this is where we would get the visas for China. We still did not have permission to go to China. There hadn’t been enough time to process the visas before the crew left the States, so the China producer had told us that we could get them while we were in India, since we had some time to take care of it. So of course they needed our passports. In the U.S., I had sent all of the applications and copies of everyone’s passports to India, so that they could start the process while we were on the road. It should have been easy to just have the passports stamped, as the applications should have been signed off on before our arrival.

But it didn’t happen that way.

No one had taken our information over to the Chinese Embassy to start the process. The person responsible for the visas insisted that he hadn’t been able to do anything until he had the actual
documents. The panic button hit me again, but this time it was ten times stronger than it had been in Rome. This was an issue for the entire crew, not just a few of us. I was really angry. How could this have fallen through the cracks? I was angry that it hadn’t already been done, and even more so that the person responsible was making excuses. He didn’t even try, didn’t ask. We’d been assured that everything was taken care of, but it wasn’t. This was huge.

So after getting situated at the hotel, I planned on heading straight for the Chinese Embassy. Lately I had been spending more time in embassies than I had with the contestants or crew!

India was nothing like what it looks like in travel brochures. It was very unassuming. But what struck me the most was the amount of people who wanted my attention and money. Everywhere taxi drivers were trying to wave me down and get me into their cabs, and once I got into a cab, people were lining up in the middle of the road to try and shove things into my window so that I’d buy them. And people off on the side of the road were also selling things and vying for my attention. In Los Angeles, there might be one or two people hanging out at the end of an off ramp or by a fast food joint asking for money, as well as the occasional person selling
flowers and balloons in the middle of the street, but in India, you could multiply that by a thousand. And at the sides of the streets were people living in tents or whatever shelter they could manage. I even saw a man going to the bathroom by the side of the road. I’m assuming it was near his tent. The poverty was intense. But the women were always dressed beautifully, no matter how poor, in vibrantly colored fabrics.

So I was grateful to get settled into my hotel. I was not looking forward to going to the Chinese Embassy, but I wanted to make sure that we got our visas. I didn’t trust anyone but myself at this point. And since I was now responsible for making it happen, I wasn’t just going to sit around waiting for our Indian contact to handle the visas. I knew that he wouldn’t push the envelope to get things done. He didn’t have the same kind of panic I had. I couldn’t make him see that the world would end if we did not get those visas on time. We had some time to get them, but we were also hitting a weekend, which worried me.

The trip to the embassy was totally different from the trip to the hotel. It was beautiful. The embassies here were large and beautifully landscaped. I even saw monkeys running across the streets. It took some
time to find the Chinese Embassy, but when we got there, I noticed that it was completely enclosed by a high, protected fence. I wasn’t sure how we were going to get inside.

Then I saw it.

Think of Lucy’s psychiatric office in the
Peanuts
comic strip. That was what the visa office was like for the Chinese Embassy. It was outside the fence of this beautiful embassy, and it was like a shack with two people helping the long, undulating line of people who were standing outside. No chairs, all sun and heat. We waited for a while, and I walked around and noticed where the servants’ quarters were located and checked out the people who were milling about outside of the grounds.

We were finally able to get in line and—after a long wait—hand in all of the passports and paperwork. It was quite a stack. Obviously they weren’t ready for something like this. In fact, they hadn’t heard about us at all. That seemed strange since I understood that our Chinese producer and facilitator had been in touch from China to make sure this was going to happen according to plan. It was Thursday, and we were told that they would have to communicate back to China to get the approvals,
which should take a day, and then we should be able to get our visas on Monday.

Should, should, should. I hated that damn word. It wasn’t consoling, it came with no guarantees, and it left plenty of room for mistakes, laziness, and ineptitude. It’s a crappy word. And yet I’ve often used it myself as a way of avoiding a commitment. I determined then and there never to do so again.

And it wasn’t something I wanted to tell Bert either. We SHOULD be able to get the visas by Monday.
SHOULD!?!?!?!?!?
was pretty much his guaranteed reaction. It wasn’t a “should,” but a “must”. If we didn’t get our visas on Monday, we would have to stop the race. And since no embassies or officials worked on the weekend, Friday was my only chance to make sure anything got done. I had pulled off a miracle in Rome. Could I do it here, in India?

I contacted the producer for the China shoot, and told her that I was panicking and wasn’t at all sure this was going to happen. She was one of the few producers I didn’t know. I had worked with most of the others on
Wild Things
. But I wasn’t sure how she would deal with the news that her plan of getting the visas in India was kind of falling apart. To my amazement and respect, she handled
it well. She told me that we had done everything we could; there was nothing more we could do. She would get in touch with her contact and make sure everything was in place on her end for us to get the visas on Monday, but only so much could be done. While she was upset, she was rational, and I appreciated that. If she was panicking, she didn’t verbalize it quite like I did. However, Bert was less rational.

Since I was completely obsessed with my own drama of getting the crew visas for China, I wasn’t aware of how the race was progressing. I had been either hanging out in my hotel room or at the embassy. It was a nail-biting waiting game. Alison was pretty much handling all of the logistics for the contestants, which I think I was supposed to be doing before the entire visa mess came up. That is, she was checking in the contestants at each location and being an ear for Bert. She updated me on what was happening with them. The crew and contestants were going to leave New Delhi for the Taj Mahal, and then return to New Delhi before moving on to Thailand. She went on with the crew and contestants while I stayed at the hotel and caught up on paperwork and came up with different travel scenarios for how the contestants could get to Thailand and around India.

At right about that time, I had an ugly run in with Alison.

As I’ve said, I thought she was very capable and had a lot of respect for her talent. However, like a few other people on the shoot, she had never worked with Bert before. She wanted to do everything he asked of her. Well, as much as Bert and I had trouble getting along, I was able to help settle him down while still keeping him informed. I believe there is always a good way to deliver bad news to an angry producer. And even if I wanted to “murder” my boss at times, I wanted to do everything I could to make him look good and make
me
look good. So Alison and I were alike in that way. It’s just that she didn’t know how to handle his yelling or his orders. It was starting to wear on her.

One night I was in my hotel room, and was talking to Laura in the States on my cell phone. I needed to talk to someone not in the hurricane of the show and to tell me everything was going to be okay. I also had a production cell phone, and was on hold with our travel agent in the States, who was coming up with information on potential travel scenarios for the contestants. Then Alison called me on my room phone.

She was clearly upset, so I set both cell phones down on my bed and took the call. Alison was crying
and yelling at the top of her lungs, telling me that Bert needed the airline information NOW! and couldn’t wait any longer for me to get it. I told her that as soon as I had it I would call, just as I always did. But she just kept on crelling (a cross between crying and yelling) about how bad I was making her look. I just kept on repeating myself. I was getting pretty pissed off, because they should have known by then that I always gave them everything as soon as possible. But I also had it in the back of my head that Bert was probably paranoid about me after what had happened in Rome. We finally hung up.

Even my friend had been able to hear Alison screaming at me from the phone that was resting on the bed, so you can imagine just how loud and upset she was. I told my friend I had to call her back. The travel agent was getting the info faxed over to me, so I hung up with him too. I called the production office in the States and spoke to Phillip.

“She’s been Berterized,” I told him. “Oh no.” he replied. He knew exactly what I meant. It was that one time when you got reamed up and down for nothing. And since Bert never went one on one with me (I’m sure this was because I matched him in height and weight), he always took it out on someone else. She was doing her job, and doing it well. He
should’ve called me if he had a problem, but instead he’d picked on someone from whom he could get a reaction. I felt bad for her, but I knew that she’d be on to him in a couple of months or so, just like everyone else.

It was great to have the weekend to catch up on things. I spoke to Terry, who told me that we were going to need to lose another crew. I knew that, and had already picked one out. It was random. They were the only two crew members who were not getting visas to China. They would end in Thailand, and then head home. I even spent a little time trying to get my ever-expanding pile of receipts together and sent back some
Amazing Race
trash. Everything seemed to be on track for getting the visas on Monday. I had not heard anything except that the information had been sent to the embassy in India and all they needed to do was process it. I even had time to go out with Alison and do a small bit of shopping and get some fries from McDonalds. I was happy about that because I felt bad about how she had been treated and our disagreeable phone argument.

While I was out, I tried to take pictures of some sacred cows that were milling about the hotel, but they kept running away from me and a cameraman
that I had met outside. It was like we were chasing them around the property.

I took advantage of my five-star hotel room and took a relaxing and very long bath. It almost felt like a day off. But with every few moments of good came something bad.

I had another problem that sent me into a panic.

I could not pay my hotel bill. The front desk told me that my credit card was maxed out, and I needed to find another way to pay. I gave him all my credit cards and none would work. I called the India facilitator for help, but they said they were tapped out of money. Even our travel agent wasn’t able to assist me, though I can’t remember why. I called Terry at the office and told him that I needed a cash advance so that I could move on. He said, “No problem.” He asked me to check in with him on Monday to see what they could do. Monday was turning out to be a very busy day.

But the weekend wasn’t over yet. The race was still happening, and I had to meet up with the crews at the airport in order to facilitate excess baggage fees and check on the contestants. I always had to show my ticket out of India in order to enter the airport.
After a while, the guy started to recognize me and just let me through. The entrance to the airport always had a long line, and everyone would just stand there, enduring the heat. Since I had no luggage, I just bypassed everyone in line, channeling my inner pushy American. It was the longest weekend I’d ever experienced in my life. It felt like I’d never get out of India.

At least Monday started out well.

I was able to see the Academy Awards. It was crazy to watch them live in the morning, but so cool. I got room service and watched the show while I got ready to go to the embassy. I stopped by the facilitators’ home first to say hello and see their setup. It was the one thing I was determined to do since we still hadn’t met in person.

Unfortunately, my day was downhill from there. The embassy had not processed the visas for China. The crew needed to leave on Tuesday for their next destination, but there was nothing that could be done. I called the producer in China to let her know and started the phone chain so that everyone would find out that I didn’t have the visas. It would take another day to get them, but there was a hitch. The visa office was only open on Monday, Wednesday, and
Friday. So the earliest we could get them would be Wednesday.

NO WAY! Not acceptable
. I was screaming that in my head while trying to have a pleasantly firm conversation with the visa person. “Isn’t there some way we can get them on Tuesday? Everything is riding on this. I’ll do whatever is necessary to pick them up tomorrow. You don’t have to open the visa office, and we won’t tell anyone, just please, please, we need the visas on Tuesday.”

After much pleading, begging, and crying, he said, “Yes,” and told me to meet him there in the morning, and everything would be fine.

Would, would, would. I like that word. Very firm and committed.