On to Africa! or The Waiting Game

As today would be a taxing day of travel, I slept in for a little while, finally waking up at around 10 in the morning.  I went downstairs in my hotel, lugging my bags along with me, and deposited my room key to the front desk.  I was not surprised at all to learn that my taxi to the airport had not been called yet, so I sat and waited about twenty minutes for it to arrive.  I wasn't at all worried because my flight to Mumbai on Jet was scheduled to leave Delhi at around 8:30 pm.

The taxi was typical of the kind often found in Delhi, which only come in two styles it would seem.  The first is an ancient car, from before the cars of the 50's that so haunt Cuba's streets.  The second style is the exact same as the minibus van used by the Libyan terrorists in Back to the Future.  I know it's a stretch reference, but it's completely true.  Needless to say, by the transitive property of "Grant gets to ride to the airport in uncomfortable vehicles" I was left with the latter option and also without things such as proper suspension or enough headroom for any creature other than a hobbit.  After the lengthy, mostly unpaved, and somewhat uncomfortable ride to the Indira Gandhi International Airport, my driver dropped me off at the wrong building, so I had to walk from the Air India check-in building to the building designated for all other airlines.

I was flying domestically to Mumbai, where I would be connecting with a late/early 2:30 AM flight on South African Airways to Johannesburg.  I wasn't going to be let into the domestic terminal without a receipt or some proof of purchase of a ticket, which I did not have.  All I had on my was the itinerary provided me by STA (my travel agency), but the Indian Military Guards were not pleased with this and directed me to the Jet Airways ticketing office.  After a significant time waiting in line behind a family of confused Europeans, I got to the ticket window, where I managed to change my flight to Mumbai to an earlier time.  This really just changed which airport I would be waiting in, but I had been told that there was free wifi at Mumbai's, so I wanted to wait there.  The flight change took the attendant about 15 minutes to process, as well as 15 dollars to approve.

I then headed into the Delhi domestic terminal, where I had to wait in line with my ticket receipt to check my bag and receive my boarding pass.  Once into the terminal and past security I went up to the second level and had some KFC for lunch.  The terminal really reminded me of the international terminal that I had spent so much time in last summer in Guangzhou, China.  Even though I had moved my flight time up by several hours, I still had about an hour to wait before boarding began in Delhi, so I found a chair and settled in, with Waterloo Sunset playing in my ears.  After some waiting and reading I got on a bus which took me out to the plane on the tarmac, and then boarded.

The flight was relatively short, only about 2 hours, and also pretty rough as we flew through the monsoon clouds, which were themselves moving quickly in the opposing direction, towards Delhi.  It was nice, upon touching down in Mumbai, to note that the rains had lowered the temperature here, so that it was 30 degrees cooler.  Of course, that still meant that the temperature was in the high 80's, so it wasn't quite as perfect as it could have been, but I had no complaints.  Once I picked my bag up I had to take the terminal transfer bus, which goes across the runways and along the airport fences, which are bordered by the same slums seen in Slumdog Millionaire.  Once I got off the bus and gathered my bags I made my way to the South African Airways check-in area of the terminal, where I was curtly informed by a uniformed guard that I would not be permitted to enter the terminal until precisely two hours before my flight, and not a second sooner, which left me with about five hours out in the heat with nothing to do.  This terminal policy was due to security concerns, which were understandable given the Mumbai terror attacks of last year.

Irritated now, I was approached by a member of airport staff, who recommended that I wait in a nearby hotel, but the price to do so was ridiculous, and so I passed on the offer.  I went instead to the airport waiting area,which had a two dollar entrance fee, and sat down.  There I found some AC, but not wifi, and so I did a lot of reading, some picture uploading, and journaling.  It was boring, but not the end of the world, and I soon lost my temper.  I also spent about $5 in various trips to my only outlet for food and drink, a small coffee stand that was nominally affiliated with the Cafe Coffee Day chain.  I also went just outside the waiting area and used a pay phone to call home and tell everyone I was fine and dandy.

Eventually, and mercifully, enough time elapsed and I was allowed to enter the terminal.  The check-in process was typical, although the presence of a good number of South Africans did a lot to lift my spirits.  Getting through security was a little more convoluted than normal, due to a combination of India's poor understanding of queuing with their insistence on gender separation in security lines.  Once through I got myself some very belated dinner, again at KFC, and plopped down to watch the final twenty minutes of the Spain vs. Portugal World Cup game.  Obviously I didn't have much time to sit and wait in the terminal, which was the only nice thing about Mumbai's policy.  I was very pleasantly surprised to find that my plane was only about one third full and that I would thus have plenty of room to stretch out on the flight.  As it was now three in the morning I slipped off to sleep soon after the plane took off.