« Life as Art | Main | Around Town »
April 15, 2006
Passage to India
Beth left the house early on Friday, the day I left for India. She was going to NYC to celebrate her friends birthday and shop for furniture for our new house. I was strange being in the house by myself, preparing for such a long journey. Beth was up at (!!) 2:30AM to pack and get to the airport by 4:30AM. I woke up a few minutes before she left, and watched her steam around the bedroom finishing her packing and then dashing for the airport in her car. Not much time for tearful good-bye’s.
Mom and Dad gave me a lift to the airport around 12:30 – I was pretty early so I had a few minutes to grab lunch at the restaurant at the airport. It was surprisingly good – but it’s not like I'll be eating there without travel involved. The flight from Burlington to Washington Dulles was completely uneventful, but there were a few interesting moments leaving Dulles for Frankfurt. We were supposed to push back at 5:15PM, but by 5:25 we were still at the gate. The captain got on and explained that some bit in the cockpit wasn’t working properly, and (!!) they didn’t have a replacement part. “Stand by” he says like we had a lot of choice. An hour later he gets back on the intercom and tells us all is well and we’ll only be 30 minutes late getting into Frankfurt. Sure beats rearranging all my travel plans…
Frankfurt was interesting. I was surprised to learn that so many of the connections in Frankfurt were really tight, and arriving late put a number of people off their schedule. My flight of course was not tight at all (I had three hours to kill), so I went over to the Red Carpet Club. The Frankfurt club was MUCH better than the ones in the US. They had a full, (self serve) bar, snacks and light fare (rolls, meat, cheese). It was hard to find a power outlet to recharge my laptop, but I finally located on. All in, it was a pleasant stay.
The flight from Frankfurt to Bangalore was packed. However, flying with a flight packed with educated Indian’s (more on the whole class thing later) is more like flying with a couple of hundred of your soon-to-be-close friends. It seemed to be a bit of a contest of who could be more helpful, the cabin crew of the passengers. There was however a surprising amount of “call button” usage – not something you see in the US. I got the feeling (from my seat-mate) that this was viewed more as the correct way of doing thing rather than a control thing. There were about 10 white people on the flight – the rest were Indians.
I expressed a lot of concern about being in the air for 20+ hours, mainly because I simply can’t sleep on airplanes. This is really exacerbated by whatever is wrong with my back. Beth observed that “you’ll sleep when you get tired enough”. Well, I didn’t sleep at all on the Washington – Frankfurt flight, and I think I dozed off for 30 minutes on the Frankfurt to Bangalore flight. So, while I still can’t say conclusively I can’t sleep on planes, my need for sleep kicks in after 20+ hours…
I know this is going to sound a little strange, but I really enjoyed the Frankfurt to Bangalore. It was 9+ hours (some horsing around leaving and then trying to land), but Lufthansa has excellent service all things considered. There were a couple of movies, a couple of meals and a lot of time to sit and read.
The Bangalore airport was pretty much what I expected – brand new construction side-by-side with stuff that was falling apart. The general impression was very similar to Taiwan: new and old side by side. However, the scene outside the airport was nothing like in Taiwan – it was mass confusion. 
The hotel had arranged a ride from the airport for me – I scanned the crowd (100+) of drivers-with-signs and found mine. We walked (which is a euphemism for “pushed way through teeming masses”) to the street (which is a euphemism for “part of pavement used more often by cars/trucks than people”) and was asked to wait. After being almost run over by one bus and some sort of oil/gas truck, by ride appeared. Finally – space, quite, ahhhhhhh.
A couple of things to note: Mosquitoes and driving on the left. The first I had been warned about, and wondered how bad they were. There aren’t that many of them, it’s just that they are everywhere. The second surprised me, but in retrospect shouldn’t have.
I’m staying at the Oberoi Hotel. The hotel situation in India is a bit odd – there’s nothing comparable to say the Ramada – it’s either a flop house or 5 star hotel. All business travel is to the latter. The hotel is on MG Road which is very noisy and busy. The hotel room has a set of double doors that block out most of the noise, and the room faces a beautiful garden. I’m writing this at breakfast (quite the elegant affair) so I haven’t had any time to explore. That’s next on the agenda. Stay tuned…
(Post Script: I tried (and tried and tried) to upload several other pictures, but I finally figured out that there's a limit of 1Mb for pictures upload. If anyone knows how to get around this by either reducing the quality of the picture or getting rid of the upload limit, could you please email me? )
Posted by pgutwin at April 15, 2006 11:30 PM