I’m meeting Jess in Trivandrum, Kerala on the 24th Feb. I originally thought I’d have been back in India for a few weeks before meeting her for the final leg, but I’d spent longer in SE Asia than anticipated and now it’s a bit of a race to get from northern Vietnam to the southern tip of India in time.
Believe it or not, the simplest route without paying a fortune seems to be as follows (all by air):
- Hanoi to Bangkok
- Bangkok to Calcutta
- Calcutta to Chennai (Madras)
- Chennai to Trivandrum
Hanoi to Bangkok
I was one of the first to check in and headed smugly through passport control and security until my hand baggage gives the man behind the X-ray cause for concern and I realise I’ve stupidly left my Swiss army knife in my rucksack.
I head back the wrong way through security, nervously leaving my passport with some random at passport control and rejoin the check-in queue which is now as big as I feared it would be when I decided to get there early.
Half an hour later, after checking the knife in as special hold luggage, I get back to passport control, trying desperately to remember the name and face of the man who has my passport. Fortunately he spotted me first and seemed more relieved that me, perhaps suspecting I’d done a runner and thinking of all the paperwork that might entail.
When I arrive at the gate they pull me to one side and explain that actually they can’t just send a loose knife to Calcutta via Bangkok, in the hold or otherwise, and I either need to put it in my hand baggage and they’ll put that in the hold (as long as it’s at least 5kg – I’m already thinking of cheap heavy things I could load it up with) or leave it with them and I can arrange for a friend to pick next time one visits Hanoi airport. Yeah right, I’ve got friends just popping to Vietnam via Hanoi all the time…
After exploring various options, e.g. someone was willing to post it for me to London, the most sensible thing to do was to say goodbye to the knife. My own stupid fault I suppose. I’d been careful to make sure I wasn’t carrying any gels or liquids but neglected to remove a tool offering 12 different ways for being at least a bit threatening in an aircraft.
Bangkok to Calcutta
Erring on the side of caution I decided not to risk a tight connection at Bangkok, but this left me with a very loose one – and an 11-hour wait in the airport.
I spent the hours wandering (very slowly) around the airport, listening to my iPod, and reading great swathes of Gregory David Robert’s Shantaram (on which more in a later post…). Oh yes, and smirking more than once at this dish in one of the airport restaurants:
The flight was fine (although on finishing the in-flight meal I realised rather shamefully that it was my fifth full-sized meal of the day…) but it put me in Calcutta about 1am in the morning.
I’d arranged a pick-up from the airport from a guest house I’d stayed in before, but until I saw the little man with my name scribbled on a board, I was never completely convinced it was going to work out.
The drive from the airport back into central Calcutta was a rude re-introduction to urban India – the air thick with pollution, rubbish strewn everywhere, packs of moody dogs wandering around looking for mischief, and of course the unfortunate souls who call the pavement home.
Crashed in a pretty grotty room for the night then conducted some business between gentlemen with Umesh, the son of the guest house owner in the morning: paying him for the internal flights he’d booked on my behalf, changing my remaining travellers cheques into rupees, and collecting the tatty copy of the India Lonely Planet guide, which I’d left with him back in December, rather than drag around SE Asia.
Calcutta to Chennai
Got a taxi back to Calcutta airport for my Air Deccan (India’s answer to EasyJet) flight to Chennai. On arriving in Chennai, having spent most of the short flight talking to a sports journalist from Caligut (not for the first time feeling the pain of my almost complete ignorance of cricket and sport in general), I followed his advice to just stay in a hotel near the airport, rather than travel into central Chennai to find a cheap guest house only to travel straight back in the next morning.
The hotel I ended up in was one of those mean-spirited places that knows people are staying there largely for convenience rather than quality of service and so feels it doesn’t really need to put in the effort. The worst example of this was the hotel I stayed in at Agra (Taj Mahal territory). It was probably the most expensive hotel I’ve stayed in on the trip and everything about it just exuding an air of lazy corpulence, safe in the knowledge that when you’ve got one of the true wonders of the man-made world on your doorstep, you’re never going to be short of customers, regardless of how rude your staff are, how decrepit your rooms are, or how far the prices your the room services menu differ from the ones you actually charge (can you tell that particularly annoyed me?) …
Back in Chennai the room had TV (”all our rooms have TV sir”) but just relied on a small portable aerial for reception so picked up about four channels, badly. Obviously none were in English…
In the end I just turned up the aircon (I’ll think of a compensatory way of reducing my carbon footprint) and had a lovely long sleep under sheets and even a blanket.
Chennai to Trivandrum
The final leg was very straightforward and delivered the added satisfaction of knowing that the various pieces had come together successfully and I’d made in to Trivandrum well in time to meet Jess, in fact with a couple of days to spare.
Original post by Glen and software by Elliott Back