Indian Night

It is 1.45AM local time and I’m currently sitting in a nice pale brown, orange and red Air India aircraft waiting to head from Mumbai to Bangalore where I’ll spend the rest of the week. It’s been a long trip which started with a hire car from Biarritz to Pau at 5AM CET. For the attentive among you, you’ll know it’s the second time I’ve been to India. Whilst it is difficult to be away from home, especially when 3 young children require so much attention, I was sort of looking forward to coming back whilst I was on the flight from Paris – I really couldn’t get my bearings the last time I was here and I am hopeful that maybe it will make a bit more sense this time.

The trip so far has been fine, albeit long. The initial flight to Mumbai was a touch surreal in the sense that it felt like I was chasing the night – I went to sleep in Paris and it was daytime but when I woke up a few hours later over Tashkent it was pitch black outside. My travelling companion this time was a 3.5 year old Indian boy who was heading back to Mumbai (Bombay) for a month’s holiday. He was impeccably behaved and he was even quite happy to share some of the leg room under his seat so I could stretch myself out – I’m almost tempted to say that travelling with children (or dwarfs) has some distinct advantages. I was all the more impressed by his behaviour when his mother told me they had just flown in from the US – Paris was just a stopover for them! Little Samju would have done almost 24 hours of solid travel...I recalled my 80 minute flight to Stansted with Maxime for Christian’s wedding with shame....

We arrived in Mumbai at 9 minutes past midnight. Lucky really because arriving at this time meant that it was a cool 25C....a far cry from the end of the harsh winter in Europe. Furthermore it wasn’t long before I was reminded of the sheer number of people, noise and general bustle of India – 2AM in Mumbai airport is like rush hour in Paris CDG.

In honesty I didn’t have a great deal of time to clear immigration, check in for the next flight and get through security and customs and then to the gate in an airport and a country that is quite unfamiliar to me. A few factors however have ensured that I could board my trusty, yet gaudy, orange flying machine in good time (surely I shouldn’t be worried that my seat isn’t actually attached to the rest of the aircraft especially because this flight has already proved to me that you can take off even when the runway is full of pot holes).... immigration that would make US Homeland Security turn in their grave, a seeming desire to push the white man with a suit carrier to the front of the business class queue (I only had an economy ticket but no-one thought to check), and a rather lax customs system where I almost ended up stamping my own ticket. But make it I did, and the other piece of good news is, that despite their being no formal announcements other than an old gentleman shouting “Bangalore Gate 4” in the corner of the room, I’m actually on the right flight. Obviously the fact that the TV screen above Gate 4 was showing “Egyptair – Cairo – Boarding” has seemed to have proven to be completely irrelevant. Handy really because I don’t think I really want to go to the country of the Nile and the Pyramids at the minute. So the morale of the story is that when travelling in India, even after having already done 15 hours, make sure you keep your wits about you.

I’m now going to try and get some sleep on this flight. I’ll arrive at around 3.45AM and then it’s a taxi to the hotel before meetings start at 8.30AM. Oh, did I forget to mention, the taxi ride to the hotel is only 1.5 hours at this time of night.......