Delhi and the Airport

November 23rd 2016

I woke up this morning and decided to post on my Jaipur experiences because the internet connection was pretty fast. I heard this sound strange for a few minutes. It sounded like someone was trying to get out of their room with their key (they locked themselves on the inside) with no success. So I decided to take a peak outside and realized it was Chrissy and Chris, they asked me to unlock the door from the outside and slid their key under the door, ha ha. Since we were already on the floor with the “restaurant” with decided to order some breakfast. The waiter was having great difficulty understanding our order in English or Hindi but finally after some pointing and repeating he understood. We waited for about 30 minutes and no food had arrived so I decided to head to the concierge desk and ask what was going on. He said I should have ordered with him in the beginning and shortly after we got our “American Breakfasts” which consisted of an interesting half omelet/half bread concoction. It was pretty good and we got some orange juice, coffee, and tea. After breakfast I was deciding on what needs to be removed from my luggage and sent back home. Carrying 16kgs of weight on your back plus and additional 5kgs in my smaller backpack was getting to be too much. So I’m sorry Lonely Planet India, it was time for you to go and I hadn’t used you in a while. With internet it’s a bit easier to plan where you want to go and don’t have to heavily rely on the guide. It’s good to use in a pinch but it’s definitely a 1-2lb extra annoyance. I gave it to Chris, who will continue on with India. I hope he makes good use out of it and passes it along to someone else in need.

We saw some people who were sitting in the restaurant roof top area and decided to go and say hi. Such friendly people, the girl I didn’t catch her name is from the U.S. but is El Salvadorian in background and her boyfriend is from Malta. They are both flight crew for a very high class airline based in the middle east, ha ha. I bet you can guess the name but no need to announce it. They’re both quite well travelled the and stories they were sharing with us about their in flight experiences were incredible. Oh, I hadn’t laughed like that in a while. Just going through cultural differences and how people have no idea how to use the washroom on the flight. One time he walked in on a guy who had climbed on top of the toilet and was going #2 in the sink. He promptly shut the door and put an “Out of Use” sign outside of the toilet. I was in stitches laughing. Another story of how a passenger didn’t know how to unlock himself from the inside of the washroom so with force ripped the door down. The passenger continued to walk down the aisle with the washroom door in his hands and approached the flight attendant saying, “something happened with the door.” They we feeling the same about Delhi as we were. Not much to do and lots of pollution, they were heading on the train to Agra and then flying out to Goa. They also agreed this is the most different country they have visited. We said good-bye to them and headed to our rooms.

I realized that my flight was not at 6pm like I thought but it was at 4pm so I needed to get going to the airport sooner than what I had thought. That meant no time to visit the post office to send home so items which I felt were becoming unnecessary. The point and shoot camera, binoculars, camera charger, water bottle with built in purifier, and my Rajastani elephant picture. I really didn’t like how the water came out of the bottle in a tiny trickle and the purification cartridge is a bit on the heavy side so it had to go. I’ll just buy water along the way plus I have purification tablets as well. Hopefully I’ll be able to post those things home in Hyderabad. I got my stuff together and headed downstairs hopeful to order a taxi to the airport. Without even checking the concierge and the manager of the hotel told me that there were no taxis available. Hmmm..what? You guys didn’t even check. Chrissy and Chris suggested I take the metro as it was super cheaper and fast but I wasn’t sure how it would work with timings since I had to walk there with what feels like a thousand pounds on my back. I opened my uber app and was just about to call a driver for the first time but then decided no it’s ok, Chrissy and Chris have volunteered to help me to the metro station. On our way out of the hotel we saw a auto rickshaw (tuk tuk) and inquired about fare to the metro station and he mumbled something like 250 rupees. It was too high but then he asked where I was going and I mentioned the airport. He said he could take me there and to get in. This is the thing with Indian drivers, they won’t tell you the fare and insist you get in, very annoying. Finally he said 350 rupees ($7), I said fine and got it. I said good bye to Chrissy and Chris in a rush but know we’ll keep in touch. The driver takes me about 10 meters, parks the tuk tuk and tells me he’s gotta go to some hotel to pick up money. Whatthe?! I’m getting late to get the hotel and he needs to go run errands. I looked at the watch and decided that I have some time so to wait for him. He must have been gone for 10 minutes and I was just about to get out and go find another driver but he came back and off we went to the airport. Delhi traffic is bananas and I realized it was better that I took a small tuk tuk then a big sized car because at least they can weave through traffic a lot quicker. We got to an intersection and he kept shouting to me, “accident, accident.” I said , “so? Find another route!” He looked at me a little weary and then said, “yes ok.” That’s when I decided to pull up my Google offline maps and see if he was really taking me to the airport, after all, it’s India and you never know.

We got to the airport, I paid him and headed up an elevator to the departure terminal. I see security everywhere and they aren’t letting you in without a boarding pass and your i.d. I had to dig through my bag to find my passport but I didn’t have a boarding pass, it was on my phone and the internet was taking forever to load. I had a screen shot of my confirmation code but that wasn’t good enough for him. He needed to see my name on a ticket. After a few minutes the internet started working and he could see that I did indeed have a ticket so he let me through. I tried to check into the flight in the morning but no success on the computer, it kept showing an error msg. Same thing happened when I tried checking in on the kiosk. Kept saying no seat number assigned so I went to the bookings desk hoping they didn’t bump my seat. Thankfully they didn’t. I went through security and started to look for my gate. Nope, no gates. Just shops and restaurants. I started thinking umm, what’s going on? As I walked around I see this elevator that says “To All Gates”. Ok so I decide to go down and all I see on the ground floor is hoards of people sitting and waiting at gates. I decided no point in sitting on the floor, go back upstairs, get something to eat, relax bit until you have to board and then go to the gate. A bit of a confusing system because it seems as if once you’ve gone to the boarding gates, you can’t come back up. I bypassed some security and got back upstairs and saw exactly what I was going to eat. KFC, ha ha. Dylan told me it’s the best in India so why not try a bite. I grabbed a Chicken Zinger sandwich combo and I’m happy to see the portion sizes are much smaller than Canada. Come with what we would say is a small or extra small pop, small fries, and a sandwich. No seats were available at the table area and many people thought they could put their bags on the stand up tables but I decide to position myself at a standing table pretty much next to someone bag. The owner of the bag kept starring at me like what am I doing, can’t I see his bag? I couldn’t care less right now. You know that people are coming here to eat, move you bag buddy. I chatted for a little bit with a kid who broke his leg and was in a wheel chair and asked him how he broke his leg. He said he broke it while jumping on a trampoline but he’s getting he cast off on Monday so he’s pretty happy. I finished eating and headed towards the boarding gates. Which aren’t boarding gates but gates to buses which take you directly to your plan. I’m not sure what they would do if you didn’t get on your boarding bus on time but I didn’t want that to happen to me. I sat on some stairs and started chatting to a lovely Guajarati woman who lives in Hyderabad. I kept getting a phone call and picked up the phone to see it was the airlines calling me to tell us our flight was 40 minute delayed. No big deal, these things happen. I waited and then came back to the bus boarding area. No signs showing it was the right gate, just people shouting. I could see some people on another flight were in our queue. They kept throwing up their arms like typical Indian style and saying how they were shocked at our disorganized things were. Seriously? This is India. You should know things aren’t gonna run 100% and that these things happen every where in the world as well. I got on the bus fighting people for a standing spot then we got onto the plane, more fighting to push to my seat. I guess this is just a part of life here, ha ha. The rest of the flight went pretty well but I did notice a man in the row next to me in the middle seat propping himself up to stare at me. I mean it was pretty obvious and a bit creepy. The starring went on for a few hours, so finally I started starring back at him. He would pretend like he was looking else where then his eyes met mine and were locked. I kept looking, refusing to look away. Then after about 10 uncomfortable seconds I said to him, “Is there something I can help you with?” He immediately got super embarrassed and turtled into his chair, ha ha! I’m definitely looking forward to seeing Suchita soon and southern India ☺