It was one of those few days when getting up early in the morning- as early as 4 am, was not at all challenging. I wished I could say it was because of the excitement surrounding the trip. But no, the reason here was quite different. It was simply because I could not sleep the previous night, thanks to the crappy hotel room. The ongoing monsoon and poor maintenance had caused molds on one corner of the wall. The ceiling fan made its presence felt only by its creaking sound. As if this was not enough, there was a swarm of mosquitoes in the room that were having a real feast. I tried to mummify myself with my shawl so that I don't let an inch of my skin exposed to mosquitoes, but I was only defeating the purpose. There was no way I was going to sleep this way. Aditya was beside me and he too didn't seem to be asleep. Now and then he slipped out of bed and browsed on his Android based Nexus one. I had set the alarm at 4.30 a.m in my cell phone. But that seemed to be unnecessary, I was out of my bed a good 15 minutes before that time. My head felt heavy because of insufficient sleep.
As I was about to get along with my morning chores, cursing the unfriendly turn of events last night, I heard a few of our guys convulsed with laughter in the adjacent room. I too was in stitches when I realized that Manju had mistakenly used 'Fast Relief' (pain balm) to brush his teeth instead of Close-Up! Looked like he too had had meager sleep last night. But this act of his had surely refreshed everyone, including himself. In one hour time everyone was ready to check out of the rooms. We paid the lodging charges and caught a bus to airport.
At the airport we realized that we had not taken the print out of Jeevan and Chetan's flight ticket. Their ticket was booked separately as they had joined for the trip later. However, we showed the soft copy of the ticket in Gore's mobile and got the ticket. We entered the airport lobby after first level of screening at the entrance. We checked-in our luggage and collected the boarding pass. We had about an hour before the scheduled flight departure at 7.30 a.m. We had breakfast in one of the airport stalls. A veg-puff and tea cost me twice the cost of regular meals! Over the next few minutes I sat enjoying my first experience at the airport. After a thorough second level of screening, we entered the airport terminal. We waited with other passengers for our turn to board the flight. We sat facing a small part of run-way where I watched a couple of flights land, and few others take-off. Finally, our flight arrived at the taxi-way. There was an announcement requesting the passengers to get ready to board the flight. A couple of buses owned by Go-Air did rounds to take the passengers to the aircraft. It was a Boeing 737 aircraft with passenger capacity of about 150. As we entered the aircraft, we were greeted by the cabin crew with a 'well-practiced' smile. We took our seats and fastened our seat belt. One of the crew members started demonstrating the safety procedures with another crew member reading out the instruction in the background. It was supposed to be a serious drill, but the guy acting the safety procedures broke into laughter mid-way that made it look funny. The aircraft started taxiing to the starting point of the runway. Since it was raining, the window had fogged up and we could not see anything outside. The aircraft turned by 180 degree and was now ready to take-off. The CFM56-3B-1 high-bypass turbofan engines ran to their full potential and the resulting acceleration pushed us back into our seats. The wind had wiped the fog off the window and we had clear outside view during take-off. The aircraft soared higher and higher. We passed through the rain bearing clouds and there was sunshine. The view outside was magnificent. It was an ocean of clouds shining in the bright sun as far as the eyes could see. The co-pilot radioed to the passengers that we were traveling at an altitude of 35000 feet, at 900kmph and temperature outside was -41 degree Celsius! In about half hour time the aircraft had begun its descent in steady free fall movements. We reached Mumbai's Chattrapati Shivaji International airport in about 40 minutes. We had a transit flight to Delhi in an hour from Mumbai. The airport looked pretty messed up with aircrafts all over the place. Another example of poor infrastructure. Mumbai badly needed another airport to ease the congestion here. We loitered in the airport lobby to kill time.
In an hour we were again air-borne en route to Delhi. After 120 minutes the flight landed at Indira Gandhi International airport. The aircraft spent another 35 minutes on the taxi way before reaching the domestic terminal. We patiently waited at the baggage claim area looking for our luggage to arrive over the baggage carousel. After a while we checked out of the airport with our luggage. Reddy had already arrived a few minutes before us from Bangalore and was waiting for us outside the airport. With his unique sense of humor, he is a star in our group. Reddy's t-shirt had caught everyone's attention. From a distance, it appeared some funky t-shirt with lot of design. But when we approached him, we realized it was a plain white t-shirt with lots of well wishes, phone numbers and Indian tricolor (to name a few) scribbled all over it by his office colleagues. It would serve as a nice memento for the trip.
We were done with the light moments at the airport and it was time to get along with our plan. As per plan we would go to GATI to collect our bikes, get them repaired if there was some damage and try to reach till Chandigarh along with Tavera that we hired. Reddy was in-charge of hiring the 4-wheeler from Delhi. He was surprised when we told him we were leaving from Delhi today and asked him to call the driver to the airport. Obviously there had been a communication gap. Perhaps he was not informed about the change of plan. He thought we were leaving the next day and had booked the cab accordingly. Murphy's law strikes! Time for some contingency plans.....
As I was about to get along with my morning chores, cursing the unfriendly turn of events last night, I heard a few of our guys convulsed with laughter in the adjacent room. I too was in stitches when I realized that Manju had mistakenly used 'Fast Relief' (pain balm) to brush his teeth instead of Close-Up! Looked like he too had had meager sleep last night. But this act of his had surely refreshed everyone, including himself. In one hour time everyone was ready to check out of the rooms. We paid the lodging charges and caught a bus to airport.
At the airport we realized that we had not taken the print out of Jeevan and Chetan's flight ticket. Their ticket was booked separately as they had joined for the trip later. However, we showed the soft copy of the ticket in Gore's mobile and got the ticket. We entered the airport lobby after first level of screening at the entrance. We checked-in our luggage and collected the boarding pass. We had about an hour before the scheduled flight departure at 7.30 a.m. We had breakfast in one of the airport stalls. A veg-puff and tea cost me twice the cost of regular meals! Over the next few minutes I sat enjoying my first experience at the airport. After a thorough second level of screening, we entered the airport terminal. We waited with other passengers for our turn to board the flight. We sat facing a small part of run-way where I watched a couple of flights land, and few others take-off. Finally, our flight arrived at the taxi-way. There was an announcement requesting the passengers to get ready to board the flight. A couple of buses owned by Go-Air did rounds to take the passengers to the aircraft. It was a Boeing 737 aircraft with passenger capacity of about 150. As we entered the aircraft, we were greeted by the cabin crew with a 'well-practiced' smile. We took our seats and fastened our seat belt. One of the crew members started demonstrating the safety procedures with another crew member reading out the instruction in the background. It was supposed to be a serious drill, but the guy acting the safety procedures broke into laughter mid-way that made it look funny. The aircraft started taxiing to the starting point of the runway. Since it was raining, the window had fogged up and we could not see anything outside. The aircraft turned by 180 degree and was now ready to take-off. The CFM56-3B-1 high-bypass turbofan engines ran to their full potential and the resulting acceleration pushed us back into our seats. The wind had wiped the fog off the window and we had clear outside view during take-off. The aircraft soared higher and higher. We passed through the rain bearing clouds and there was sunshine. The view outside was magnificent. It was an ocean of clouds shining in the bright sun as far as the eyes could see. The co-pilot radioed to the passengers that we were traveling at an altitude of 35000 feet, at 900kmph and temperature outside was -41 degree Celsius! In about half hour time the aircraft had begun its descent in steady free fall movements. We reached Mumbai's Chattrapati Shivaji International airport in about 40 minutes. We had a transit flight to Delhi in an hour from Mumbai. The airport looked pretty messed up with aircrafts all over the place. Another example of poor infrastructure. Mumbai badly needed another airport to ease the congestion here. We loitered in the airport lobby to kill time.
In an hour we were again air-borne en route to Delhi. After 120 minutes the flight landed at Indira Gandhi International airport. The aircraft spent another 35 minutes on the taxi way before reaching the domestic terminal. We patiently waited at the baggage claim area looking for our luggage to arrive over the baggage carousel. After a while we checked out of the airport with our luggage. Reddy had already arrived a few minutes before us from Bangalore and was waiting for us outside the airport. With his unique sense of humor, he is a star in our group. Reddy's t-shirt had caught everyone's attention. From a distance, it appeared some funky t-shirt with lot of design. But when we approached him, we realized it was a plain white t-shirt with lots of well wishes, phone numbers and Indian tricolor (to name a few) scribbled all over it by his office colleagues. It would serve as a nice memento for the trip.
We were done with the light moments at the airport and it was time to get along with our plan. As per plan we would go to GATI to collect our bikes, get them repaired if there was some damage and try to reach till Chandigarh along with Tavera that we hired. Reddy was in-charge of hiring the 4-wheeler from Delhi. He was surprised when we told him we were leaving from Delhi today and asked him to call the driver to the airport. Obviously there had been a communication gap. Perhaps he was not informed about the change of plan. He thought we were leaving the next day and had booked the cab accordingly. Murphy's law strikes! Time for some contingency plans.....
Nice write-up Raghu, every incidence well explained. I guess you did some googling to learn about plane. One thing, its not Innova we had booked a Scorpio. But we did it through a third person, this created the gap. But as said "Jobi hota hey,ache ke liye hi hota hey", it turned good for us.
ReplyDeleteManju
Nice Blog Raghu....
ReplyDelete