Traveling in India is Stressful

Don't get me wrong, we were lucky enough to see one of the wonders of the world and the Taj Mahal is spectacular. But who would've thought that after a mere 8 weeks, we would be looking forward to the "normalcy" of life in Bangalore.

With the house securely locked so no maid-boy(s) could wander in, I left for the airport Friday morning around 8 for a 9:30 flight. We (Chandan and I, George had already left) made it to the airport in about 20 minutes, I bid Chandan farewell and accepted a kind Indian's offer to wheel my suitcase to the ticket counter. I can think of no better way to describe the Bangalore airport other than to say (excuse my language), it was a shit-show.

There were series of windows outside for ticketing and one very long line to actually get into the airport. I figured they were checking baggage as you walked in because the line was not moving very quickly. George had called earlier to say I should go to the outside window first. So I go to get in line and the man with my bag motions to the line going inside and says he's going to take my bag inside. I see the multiple signs warning, "beware of bag handlers" and tell him to just leave it with me and I'll take it the rest of the way. I give him 10 rupees and a thank you and he gives me a look like, "10 lousy rupees...cheapo." I wait, patiently, as 2 panicky Indians cut the line and start shouting at the women behind the glass with perfect make-up. Fifteen minutes later, it's my turn. I have the print-out of my email confirmation and a photocopy of our credit card and a note from George saying that it is ok for me to be charging my ticket on a credit card with his name. (When we had booked online, there was a note saying that any passenger paying with someone else's credit card must bring a photocopy of the front and back of the card along with a note from the cardholder. We were telling Vivian and Liam about this and they said it's SOP for almost all of Asia.) But the women behind the glass asked to see nothing. She just said, "yes, ma'am, this is your ticket. You can go ahead to get your boarding pass." I thought I was getting my boarding pass from her. It's now about 8:45 and I get in the line (that's only gotten longer) to get into the airport.

There are lots of people from various airlines shouting out various destinations, "any Spicejet passengers to Mumbai? Kingfisher passengers to Chennai?" One women is telling people with "hand luggage" that they can enter through another door. As we slowly inch ever closer to the door, I noticed there are actually 2 lines but one is much shorter. You know what happens when you get in the short line...so I ask a nice lady wearing an Air Deccan uniform what the short line is for and she says, "for Kingfisher passengers only." I accept her answer but notice no one is checking that their are only Kingfisher passengers in the line and also that no one from my line seems to be moving into the shorter line. I refuse to be tricked into getting into the short line. A few minutes later, I ask a Kingfisher employee what the shorter line is for. He says, "for passengers with only hand luggage." This seems like a better answer even though the women a few feet back was telling those with hand luggage to enter a different line altogether. And still, it seems as though there are people with larger bags in the line. So, I debate getting into the shorter line long enough until I am close enough to the front where the line has morphed into just a crowd of people pushing to get to the guard at the door. Controlled mayhem. I get caught in the flow of people and hand my e-ticket and passport to the guard who says nothing but gestures me and my bag through with his hand.

Once inside, there are just hundreds of people milling around. There are windows where you get your boarding pass, a line that snakes around into the middle of the room but with no roping to filter people through. Also in the middle of the room are a couple of baggage security scanner machines, with no line but an abundance of airport personnel laughing and chatting with one another around the machines. It was totally and utterly chaotic. It was unclear who was going where, where you should jump in line, who was actually in line; there were plenty of unattended bags around and no one with a clear answer of where to go.

I was flying on Jet Airways so I find a JA kiosk with a JA employee standing next to it and I ask her if I can check-in at the kiosk. "Certainly ma'am." She punches in my name and sees I am going to Delhi but then walks away and starts talking to some other man. They look at my e-ticket and exchange a few words. I think she is going to ask me about for permission to use George's credit card and get it ready to hand over. The women comes back and says, "you'll have to go to the counter because it's less than 45 minutes to your flight and the kiosk locks you out if you are less than 45 minutes to departure." She brings me up to the business class counter(even though I was flying economy) and I hand the women my ticket and passport, and have my note about the credit card at the ready. I give her my suitcase to check-in and she says, "oh, this bag has not gone through security. You have to go wait in that line." She points to the line out the door that's even longer now. I tell her I just came from that line and I was told to come here to get my boarding pass. It's about 9:10 now and I tell her I will be late if I have to wait in that line. As I'm talking, she's handing me my boarding pass and passport and some guy takes my bag. The women with my boarding pass is giving me a "just relax lady" look and says, "here's your boarding pass. You now have to wait in that line for security check (pointing to the crowd of people in the middle of the room). Have a good flight." I am busy watching the man with my bag who has taken it to one of the screening machines. I wait for him to bring in back and make sure they put the right baggage claim ticket and get into another line.

Now I'm nervous that I'm definitely going to be late because there is another 9:30 flight to Mumbai that is already boarding. But all the other passengers look equally anxious and there are lots of airline employees again shouting out different flight numbers and destinations. They are pulling these passengers from the line and moving them to the front. So, I figure the worst that can happen is I become one of those passengers that gets to cut the line. There is only one monitor listing the flights and luckily I can see it from where I am standing. Others have to rely on the crackly voice on the intercom to hear which flights are boarding at which gates. At about 9:30, my flight gets listed as delayed until 9:50. This is more of a relief than a hassle as I still haven't gotten through security.

I am closer to the front (can no longer see the monitor) but realize that my line has just about stopped moving, while the one to my left (also to get through to the boarding gates) is still moving. A man a couple of people ahead of me starts talking to the guard at the door and while they are not speaking English, I gather that the man is asking the guard why the one line is moving but our line is not. This incites the rest of the people around us to have a very heated, "yeah, why is that," reaction. You know how attractive people can be when they are hot, annoyed and trying to make a flight. So, the guard lets some more people in and now I am only 4 or so people away. Once you get through the door though, you just wait again to put your carry-on bags through security. The man in front of me says to the female "guard" by the other line, "you have to stop letting your line come to this side once they are in the door. Your line keeps moving but we haven't gone anywhere for 15 minutes. Why are you letting the people from your line move over here?" He is neither soft-spoken nor gentle in his demeanor. The female just sort of ignores him and he turns to our guard, "tell her to stop her line so we can get through!" Our guard just points to the inside of the door where there is no where to move and the man says, "I realize this is all her fault (pointing to the other guard) but what's the point of having two lines if only one gets through?" At the point, it sort of turns into a free-for-all and our guard let's us through but everyone is shoving and pushing. I get bumped next to two British women and their kids and they say, "this is mad, isn't it?" We notice that there is a separate line for women and since there aren't many females, we make our way over to the side, past all the pushing men and get through security. But of course, this is India, and they love their paperwork so I had put my bag on the scanner but didn't have a tag on it. So I had to wait for the grouchy women by the scanner to give me a ticket so that she could stamp it with a "there are no tweezers, bombs, or other deadly items in this bag." By 10, I had made it to the gate to find that my flight had been delayed until 10:15 which normally, would be very frustrating but was a pleasant surprise giving me a few minutes to relax. For a very small airport, they sure have succeeded in creating a disorganized and confusing space.

The flight itself was very smooth and surprisingly, getting a pre-paid cab from the airport to the hotel in Delhi was easy. I went to the pre-paid counter, paid about $5, gave the man my name, the number of bags I had, and got two copies of a written receipt. Then, I walked out of the airport and following a partitioned line labeled "pre-paid taxis" and a man asked me if I had my receipt and asked me my name. I then got in the cab, gave the driver my other receipt and he asked for my name, shouted it to a man who wrote it in some book and we were off. We went about 100 feet and stopped to let some man in black pants and a blue button down shirt in the front seat. I was told he was from the police and he smiled and asked me where I was going. We drove about another 100 feet and he jumped out and told me to enjoy my stay in Delhi. From these short interactions at the airport, I knew I was in India but once we got on the road, I knew I was definitely not still in Bangalore.

There were plenty of auto-rickshaws and scooters and I was in an old car with no air-conditioning but the streets were wide and clean. Drivers stayed within the lane lines. We stopped at red lights and waited for them to turn green...it was down-right organized. I met George at the hotel around 3 and we headed out to see some of the sights. We had a new driver for the weekend. His name tag said Rama Kant but the business card he gave Sir just said RK. RK was no Chandan. He seemed pleasant enough at first even if he probably only understood 20% of what we were saying. He took us to the famous Red Fort but told us we couldn't go in because he didn't have anywhere to park. Then George asked about another part of town and he said he wouldn't take us because it was too far. Instead, he would take us by the President's House to take pictures. At first he made it seem like he was giving us tips - like "you don't want to go into the Red Fort because the locals will try to sell you overpriced souvenirs, you shouldn't wasted your time going across town but go to the President's house because it's on our way back to the hotel" - but we think that he really just didn't want to work too hard. After we got through sight-seeing, it was about 6 pm and he tried to tell us he was done for the night. We had made plans to have dinner with George's boss from the US who was in town so we told him we needed him to take us to dinner. Again, he tried to say he was done working and was very put out that he had to drive us. Then, when we told him we wanted to leave for Agra early Saturday, he acted like it was the first time he had heard of this. "Oh, we go to Agra tomorrow?" But when George made the reservation for the car and driver, he had to include our itinerary so we're not sure why this would have been news to him. So from the first night, our impression of RK was that he was no Chandan (and he proved it over and over again).

The city of Delhi however, left a very positive impression. Not only was it more organized than Bangalore but it was also cleaner and more modern. At the end of the street leading to the President's house was a monument called the "India Gate" that looked like the Arc de Triumphe. From the gate you drive up a long road with a well-groomed park in the middle, to the other end with the President's house. Driving up the street, it felt like we were at the Mall in Washington, DC. It looked and felt totally different than Bangalore. The street was wide with no garbage, there was only one or two stray dogs...and yet it is Bangalore that was once known as the "garden city," go figure.

The President's House is a place fit for the President of the largest democracy in the world. It was well protected and enormous. As you can see from the pictures, the President's house was the last stop. First, we went to the Red Fort. To get there, we had to go through a section of town called "Old Delhi" that was much more Bangalore-ish. The stores were more run down, it was more crowded and generally dirtier. We also saw manually powered rickshaws - men on bikes pulling others. Since we didn't actually go in the Fort, there isn't much for me to tell you other than it was large and red. It took about 10 years to complete in the mid-1600s, is where the President gives an address every year on India Independence Day (15 Aug.) and was occupied by the British who destroyed some of it in the 1800s but then had a change of heart and set out to restore it in the early 1900s. But still, for as much as Delhi seemed more modern and like a first world than third world country, we saw an elephant on the side of the road on the way back to the hotel. We were going to fast to get a picture but truly a big, grey, elephant. There was a man on top but I cannot begin to imagine what they were doing or where they were going.

When we got back to the hotel, we got a call and Sir answered. I hear, "Yes. Ok. Where? Room 105? Ok, sure. Thanks. See you then." We had been invited to Room 105 for free cocktails from 7-7:30. Free cocktails in some random room? I asked Sir if it was Micheal and Dwight from "The Office" who called. He said that in fact it was a women welcoming us to the Delhi Taj Palace Hotel who invited us. Not ones who turn down a free cocktail, we headed down to room 105. It was a little awkward at first but the nice women told us that every night they invite new guests of the hotel to one of the suites to get their feedback about their stay at the hotel. Soon after we arrived, a Scottish gentlemen walked in with the same confused look but saw us sitting out on the patio with our glasses of champagne and joined us. A minute later another group of Indian-Londoners came. The Scottish guy told us he was on the same plane as Bob Geldof who was in town for some leadership summit being held in our very hotel. He apparently was staying at the hotel too. The Indian-Londoners were in town for a family wedding but had not been to India for 10 years. A Canadian later joined us. He had just arrived and worked for a security company responsible for keeping Middle Eastern Sheiks and VIPs safe. He was telling us about some underwater device that can detect intruders coming from the Sea. He said he deals with very high-level people who go to great lengths to keep themselves safe. Indeed.

And that's only Friday...but it's getting late so I'll save Agra for tomorrow. But just so the suspense doesn't kill you, the Taj Mahal is breath-taking/amazing/spectacular - pick your favorite adjective - but our trip out and back continued to be stressful and aggravating and interesting mostly because of RK, tourist traps and constantly feeling like you are getting scammed which is a terrible way to look at the world.

Also, I am late in posting because this morning I had to go practice my runway cat-walk because I am going to be modeling saris at this Diwali Fiesta on Wed. Diwali is a Hindu holiday celebrated at the beginning of November and the OWC is hosting a party on Wed. in honor of the holiday.

More to come...