If I thought the 7 hour bus ride from Rishikesh to Delhi and the 10 hour car ride from Delhi to the Taj Mahal were shite, that was only because I've never tried to get out of Indira Gandhi International Airport before.
I shouldn't have been surprised it was such a tortuous procedure. I mean, I have witnessed the purchasing of a sim card in Delhi, so I should have been ready for the airport experience.
Dean went back to his hotel at 10.30 on Saturday night, and even though that left me 5 hours to get my flight, I thought, this is India, I'll go now. I went down to the hotel reception to book a taxi. Unsurprisingly, the price of the taxi had gone up from 600 to 650 rupees since I last asked. Something to do with it being late at night. I didn't bother pointing out that I'd told the person who gave me the price what time I'd be leaving. I've already struggled on this trip with trying to get Indians to understand the concepts of past, present and future. I think they only understand the present, which may be why they have such trouble with advance bookings.
The guy on reception was the same one who hadn't wanted me to stay another night two days earlier, and now he was offering a place to lie down for a couple of hours, before my flight. He seemed to think it would only take 3 hours or less to get through the airport. I wasn't inclined to take his word for it.
Anyway, before long a scrum of people arrived to help me round the corner with my bags. When we got to the taxi a heated argument developed as someone had decided to sit in it while it was parked there, presumably in the hope of getting a taxi. They were soon ejected.
Eventually, we got going, and soon I was speeding past the roadside rubble on my way out of Delhi. After we'd been going about 5 minutes the driver pulled up at the roadside, and turned the lights off. He said to me 'I am toilet minute', which clearly meant he was going for a pee, but I thought it would have been funny if it was his name. I didn't bother asking him why he didn't go before we left the hotel.
About half an hour later we arrived at the airport. He asked me something I didn't understand, I gave him a tip I didn't understand, and off he went.
I had to show my passport to some army guy to even get through the bloody front door of the airport. I found the British Airways bag drop desk. It was pretty busy around there as the organisers of the world standing around championships seemed to have had some double booking snafu with the airlines. I lost count of the number of people stood around in uniforms doing f all.
The bag drop was pretty straightforward, although I did have to go to a completely different part of the airport with a young Indian lad to drop the bike bag off. Unsurprisingly, there's an immigration form to fill in to leave India, like there is to come in, but as usual they don't give you a pen, so I had to borrow one off this young lad, which after I'd filled it in led to a protracted game of finding him again to give him his pen back. I daren't try and leave India with it, in case I violated some cross border pen transport treaty.
Easy part over, I then had to join the back of one of the massive queues waiting to get through the 40 or so immigration departure desks. I probably went down the wrong funnel, but it's much harder than at Tesco, as you can't see what's going on at any of the queue fronts.
The next bit reminded me of Ghostbusters, namely 'not to cross the streams'. All the queues were moving at a snail's pace, but the one I was in seemed to be especially slow. And it was full of Germans. If there is one nation which is confounded by Indian admin above all others, it is the Germans. I don't know exactly how many people were in the queue ahead of me, but it must have been more than 50. Each time it was someone's turn to face the inscrutable customs guys, it was like watching a qualifying heat at the world staring championships. Whatever documents were handed over, it took an absolute age for them to be examined and stamped.
Some people in the queue were getting really restless as they were worried about missing flights. I was pretty worried and I wasn't flying for 4 hours. Then the Germans started kicking off at one of the queue masters, and saying things like 'I've been here an hour and the queue is hardly moving, this cannot go on'. I think you'll find it can, I didn't say. Eventually the pleading of the Germans led to our funnel getting an extra booth to go to, but no sooner had this extra booth been opened up to us, that one of the guys who was previously looking after our funnel went off for his tea break, so we still only had two inscrutables.
After about another hour and a half of moving at glacial pace, I was second in the queue. The girl in front of me, who looked Indian then had to spend about 10 minutes facing Mr Inscrutable. She had given him about 10 separate documents to start with, but then she had to empty her rucksack out, presumably to find her bronze swimming certificate, or a note from her dentist or something, before she could get through.
When it was my turn I had three things. My passport, my boarding pass and my immigration form. Pretty straightforward you would think. I wanted to say 'Look, I'm a foreigner, I don't belong here, I've got a valid passport and visa, I'm booked on a flight out of here, and I've filled in your immigration form to confirm that I'm not smuggling live chickens or rocket launchers, please let me go'. It took an absolute eternity for him to stamp my passport and boarding pass, I was thinking of those people in England who think it's ridiculous when it takes longer than 5 minutes queuing to pay for stuff at Wilkos. Let them give India a try, I thought.
After that guy let me go, I was into the security queue. Another half an hour to get to the front of that. By this point, the people who were likely to miss their flights because they'd been snarled up in the queuing system were starting to get fished out by the various airline staff. It was like a cross between those fishing stalls at the funfair and the end of Titanic seeing people in uniforms desperately trying to pull people out of the snarl up to get them onto their planes.
I had to put my metal items in a box, for which I was given one of a pair of table tennis paddles with a number on and then I had to get patted down by an army guy, while I stood in a doorframe. I haven't had much direct physical contact with anyone while in India, and I found it ironic that the most touched I've been by anyone has been by beggars or security personnel. I got an even more thorough all over pat down by this guy than I did at the Taj Mahal. Thankfully, this time I wasn't carrying any polos.
For some reason women don't get patted down in the same way. They have to go off into a double sided changing room, where presumably they have to take their bras off or something. I'm not really sure.
And then it was over, I'd been in the airport 3 and a half hours, but I was into the departure lounge. Or so I thought. Bearing in mind what I'd been through already, I then had another guy check all my documents and search me before I could even get into the departure gate. He probably wanted to check I hadn't bought any more polos since the last checkpoint.
By the time I handed my boarding pass over, it was virtually unreadable from all the stamps it had on it. I understood now why although they don't have milk shops at Connaught Place, they have roadside stalls selling rubber stamps. Stamping shit is a national pastime.
I was really glad I never took that guy's offer of a bed for a couple of hours in the hotel. I'd never have made the flight. I was feeling pretty pissed off about the whole trying to get out of India experience, but then I thought about my time spent with Dean, and I thought what would we have done if we were still in it together, and I'm pretty sure we would have both laughed about it, so I decided to laugh too.
After the Kafkaesque check in experience, the flight was pretty uneventful for the most part. Although it was long, tedious and claustrophobic, I hadn't expected anything different. Then 8 hours into it, when we got near Heathrow, the captain announced that we were going to be delayed landing in London because of snow and fog. A half an hour delay, not too bad I thought. Not too bad, until he came back on the air to tell us Heathrow was now completely closed, so we're off to Glasgow to refuel.
It may have been the pressure differences, but as we approached Glasgow I couldn't hear anything. I couldn't hear anyone talking, but much worse than that, I couldn't hear any engines. After years of watching Air Crash Investigation, I convinced myself that we were running on vapour and gliding to our deaths a few miles short of Glasgow airport. I was more scared by this, than anything that had happened to me anywhere in India.
We did eventually land, and thankfully not in the sea, or in central Glasgow, but on some tarmac, and I felt glad to be alive. I really wanted to see Ruth and my friends again. I haven't even worn my 'I can do India me' T-shirt yet. I didn't want to wear it in the airport in case I got detained for sarcasm.
We spent about two hours on the tarmac in Glasgow, before the captain let us know that we would have to stay over in hotels in Glasgow on Sunday night. Even if Heathrow had been open, the flight crew weren't allowed to work any longer so we were stuck.
I've only been to Glasgow twice before. Both times at the start of cycling holidays. Both times I've felt pretty nervous and intimidated there. I'm not a fan of starting cycling trips in cities, and mostly Glasgow has been a place I've been very eager to leave.
Being able to get off a plane from Delhi after 12 hours with someone's seatback virtually pressed against my forehead, I felt an enormous sense of relief just to be walking around again.
And then one of the greatest feelings ever. After two weeks of swimming in the quicksand of Indian bureaucracy, I got to walk past the massive queue of Indian passport holders waiting to enter Britain, and looking for pens to fill their immigration forms in, I showed my Golden Ticket British Passport to a smiley Scottish lady and 10 seconds later I was in. No admin, no staring, just a wave and a smile and I was home.
Maybe it was the unfathomable two weeks spent pleading with Indians for the tiniest of concessions, maybe it was the thoughts of imminent death I'd had on the plane, but Glasgow airport and its environs felt like heaven on earth. I got my baggage back, got directed to a hotel, checked into a hotel, asked about taxis and where to get money out, and my every request was met by a cheery smiling Scottish person who I could fully understand, and who could fully understand me.
After two weeks in the sun, I walked out into the grey Scottish day, took my first lungfulls of icy cold air, and even though I wasn't home yet, I felt at home again.
I checked into the Holiday Inn, well ahead of all the Indians on the flight who were still battling through immigration, I had a wonderful bath (my first one in two weeks), drank some tap water, made myself some coffee, charged my phone without having to lean on the plug like I had at Bhandari Swiss Cottages and generally marvelled at the facilities.
At first a night in the Holiday Inn had seemed very welcome. I hadn't slept on the plane so I thought I would probably just get a meal and sleep off the jet lag. But after my bath I didn't feel sleepy anymore, so I went back to the airport for a walk and to check out the wonder emporium of available goods at the Tesco Extra. I bought some Dairy Milk and Coca Cola and sat down for a bit, and enjoyed not being stared at.
It was still only around 2 in the afternoon. Although I'd been travelling for what seemed like days, I'd gained 5 and a half hours due to the time difference, so it was still pretty early. And then it dawned on me. I'm in Scotland now, I know how stuff works. I got some internet, checked out the train times and realised I could still get home tonight. The massive snaking queue of British Airways passengers in the airport, the near death experience I'd had on the flight to Glasgow, and the confidence I'd gained from two weeks doing crazy shit in the most bonkers place I've ever been all contributed to a feeling of wanting to take my life back from the airline. I'm not one of those poor Indians trying to get connecting flights, I'm British, I'm less than 300 miles from home, and I know how this shit works.
So I bought £3 worth of coin operated internet time, I bought myself a ticket on trainline.com, I wrote down the booking reference, I left my very pleasant Holiday Inn room behind, I walked past the still massive snaking British Airways queue, I got the shuttle bus to the train station, I lugged my bike, suitcase and rucksack through the streets of Glasgow for a bit, I collected my tickets, I got on my train to Darlington, I got Ruth to pick me up and I came home. Ruth made me a pizza, I drank tea from my own cups and I slept in my own bed.
I woke up this morning in my own bed, Ruth was there, she made me some coffee while I looked out of the window at the snow, and I said to her.
'I had the most amazing dream. I dreamt I went to India to meet Dean and I took my bike with me. It was the strangest place I'd ever been, it was sunny every day, everyone spoke English but no-one understood it, there was rubble everywhere, no-one ever brought me anything I asked for, I had to fend off beggars, touts and tuktuk drivers in the street, I went to the Taj Mahal and got my polos confiscated, I saw people and dogs sleeping in the street, I couldn't tell what anything was, or what anyone was doing, I got sunburnt in January in Rishikesh, which was full of unsmiling national stereotypes wearing clothes made from old curtains and with tea cosies on their heads, I nearly died in a plane crash and then I went to Glasgow, which was full of magical helpful Scottish people, who helped me find the way home'.
And then she told me something that completely took me by surprise.
She told me it wasn't a dream.
I shouldn't have been surprised it was such a tortuous procedure. I mean, I have witnessed the purchasing of a sim card in Delhi, so I should have been ready for the airport experience.
Dean went back to his hotel at 10.30 on Saturday night, and even though that left me 5 hours to get my flight, I thought, this is India, I'll go now. I went down to the hotel reception to book a taxi. Unsurprisingly, the price of the taxi had gone up from 600 to 650 rupees since I last asked. Something to do with it being late at night. I didn't bother pointing out that I'd told the person who gave me the price what time I'd be leaving. I've already struggled on this trip with trying to get Indians to understand the concepts of past, present and future. I think they only understand the present, which may be why they have such trouble with advance bookings.
The guy on reception was the same one who hadn't wanted me to stay another night two days earlier, and now he was offering a place to lie down for a couple of hours, before my flight. He seemed to think it would only take 3 hours or less to get through the airport. I wasn't inclined to take his word for it.
Anyway, before long a scrum of people arrived to help me round the corner with my bags. When we got to the taxi a heated argument developed as someone had decided to sit in it while it was parked there, presumably in the hope of getting a taxi. They were soon ejected.
Eventually, we got going, and soon I was speeding past the roadside rubble on my way out of Delhi. After we'd been going about 5 minutes the driver pulled up at the roadside, and turned the lights off. He said to me 'I am toilet minute', which clearly meant he was going for a pee, but I thought it would have been funny if it was his name. I didn't bother asking him why he didn't go before we left the hotel.
About half an hour later we arrived at the airport. He asked me something I didn't understand, I gave him a tip I didn't understand, and off he went.
I had to show my passport to some army guy to even get through the bloody front door of the airport. I found the British Airways bag drop desk. It was pretty busy around there as the organisers of the world standing around championships seemed to have had some double booking snafu with the airlines. I lost count of the number of people stood around in uniforms doing f all.
The bag drop was pretty straightforward, although I did have to go to a completely different part of the airport with a young Indian lad to drop the bike bag off. Unsurprisingly, there's an immigration form to fill in to leave India, like there is to come in, but as usual they don't give you a pen, so I had to borrow one off this young lad, which after I'd filled it in led to a protracted game of finding him again to give him his pen back. I daren't try and leave India with it, in case I violated some cross border pen transport treaty.
Easy part over, I then had to join the back of one of the massive queues waiting to get through the 40 or so immigration departure desks. I probably went down the wrong funnel, but it's much harder than at Tesco, as you can't see what's going on at any of the queue fronts.
The next bit reminded me of Ghostbusters, namely 'not to cross the streams'. All the queues were moving at a snail's pace, but the one I was in seemed to be especially slow. And it was full of Germans. If there is one nation which is confounded by Indian admin above all others, it is the Germans. I don't know exactly how many people were in the queue ahead of me, but it must have been more than 50. Each time it was someone's turn to face the inscrutable customs guys, it was like watching a qualifying heat at the world staring championships. Whatever documents were handed over, it took an absolute age for them to be examined and stamped.
Some people in the queue were getting really restless as they were worried about missing flights. I was pretty worried and I wasn't flying for 4 hours. Then the Germans started kicking off at one of the queue masters, and saying things like 'I've been here an hour and the queue is hardly moving, this cannot go on'. I think you'll find it can, I didn't say. Eventually the pleading of the Germans led to our funnel getting an extra booth to go to, but no sooner had this extra booth been opened up to us, that one of the guys who was previously looking after our funnel went off for his tea break, so we still only had two inscrutables.
After about another hour and a half of moving at glacial pace, I was second in the queue. The girl in front of me, who looked Indian then had to spend about 10 minutes facing Mr Inscrutable. She had given him about 10 separate documents to start with, but then she had to empty her rucksack out, presumably to find her bronze swimming certificate, or a note from her dentist or something, before she could get through.
When it was my turn I had three things. My passport, my boarding pass and my immigration form. Pretty straightforward you would think. I wanted to say 'Look, I'm a foreigner, I don't belong here, I've got a valid passport and visa, I'm booked on a flight out of here, and I've filled in your immigration form to confirm that I'm not smuggling live chickens or rocket launchers, please let me go'. It took an absolute eternity for him to stamp my passport and boarding pass, I was thinking of those people in England who think it's ridiculous when it takes longer than 5 minutes queuing to pay for stuff at Wilkos. Let them give India a try, I thought.
After that guy let me go, I was into the security queue. Another half an hour to get to the front of that. By this point, the people who were likely to miss their flights because they'd been snarled up in the queuing system were starting to get fished out by the various airline staff. It was like a cross between those fishing stalls at the funfair and the end of Titanic seeing people in uniforms desperately trying to pull people out of the snarl up to get them onto their planes.
I had to put my metal items in a box, for which I was given one of a pair of table tennis paddles with a number on and then I had to get patted down by an army guy, while I stood in a doorframe. I haven't had much direct physical contact with anyone while in India, and I found it ironic that the most touched I've been by anyone has been by beggars or security personnel. I got an even more thorough all over pat down by this guy than I did at the Taj Mahal. Thankfully, this time I wasn't carrying any polos.
For some reason women don't get patted down in the same way. They have to go off into a double sided changing room, where presumably they have to take their bras off or something. I'm not really sure.
And then it was over, I'd been in the airport 3 and a half hours, but I was into the departure lounge. Or so I thought. Bearing in mind what I'd been through already, I then had another guy check all my documents and search me before I could even get into the departure gate. He probably wanted to check I hadn't bought any more polos since the last checkpoint.
By the time I handed my boarding pass over, it was virtually unreadable from all the stamps it had on it. I understood now why although they don't have milk shops at Connaught Place, they have roadside stalls selling rubber stamps. Stamping shit is a national pastime.
I was really glad I never took that guy's offer of a bed for a couple of hours in the hotel. I'd never have made the flight. I was feeling pretty pissed off about the whole trying to get out of India experience, but then I thought about my time spent with Dean, and I thought what would we have done if we were still in it together, and I'm pretty sure we would have both laughed about it, so I decided to laugh too.
After the Kafkaesque check in experience, the flight was pretty uneventful for the most part. Although it was long, tedious and claustrophobic, I hadn't expected anything different. Then 8 hours into it, when we got near Heathrow, the captain announced that we were going to be delayed landing in London because of snow and fog. A half an hour delay, not too bad I thought. Not too bad, until he came back on the air to tell us Heathrow was now completely closed, so we're off to Glasgow to refuel.
It may have been the pressure differences, but as we approached Glasgow I couldn't hear anything. I couldn't hear anyone talking, but much worse than that, I couldn't hear any engines. After years of watching Air Crash Investigation, I convinced myself that we were running on vapour and gliding to our deaths a few miles short of Glasgow airport. I was more scared by this, than anything that had happened to me anywhere in India.
We did eventually land, and thankfully not in the sea, or in central Glasgow, but on some tarmac, and I felt glad to be alive. I really wanted to see Ruth and my friends again. I haven't even worn my 'I can do India me' T-shirt yet. I didn't want to wear it in the airport in case I got detained for sarcasm.
We spent about two hours on the tarmac in Glasgow, before the captain let us know that we would have to stay over in hotels in Glasgow on Sunday night. Even if Heathrow had been open, the flight crew weren't allowed to work any longer so we were stuck.
I've only been to Glasgow twice before. Both times at the start of cycling holidays. Both times I've felt pretty nervous and intimidated there. I'm not a fan of starting cycling trips in cities, and mostly Glasgow has been a place I've been very eager to leave.
Being able to get off a plane from Delhi after 12 hours with someone's seatback virtually pressed against my forehead, I felt an enormous sense of relief just to be walking around again.
And then one of the greatest feelings ever. After two weeks of swimming in the quicksand of Indian bureaucracy, I got to walk past the massive queue of Indian passport holders waiting to enter Britain, and looking for pens to fill their immigration forms in, I showed my Golden Ticket British Passport to a smiley Scottish lady and 10 seconds later I was in. No admin, no staring, just a wave and a smile and I was home.
Maybe it was the unfathomable two weeks spent pleading with Indians for the tiniest of concessions, maybe it was the thoughts of imminent death I'd had on the plane, but Glasgow airport and its environs felt like heaven on earth. I got my baggage back, got directed to a hotel, checked into a hotel, asked about taxis and where to get money out, and my every request was met by a cheery smiling Scottish person who I could fully understand, and who could fully understand me.
After two weeks in the sun, I walked out into the grey Scottish day, took my first lungfulls of icy cold air, and even though I wasn't home yet, I felt at home again.
I checked into the Holiday Inn, well ahead of all the Indians on the flight who were still battling through immigration, I had a wonderful bath (my first one in two weeks), drank some tap water, made myself some coffee, charged my phone without having to lean on the plug like I had at Bhandari Swiss Cottages and generally marvelled at the facilities.
At first a night in the Holiday Inn had seemed very welcome. I hadn't slept on the plane so I thought I would probably just get a meal and sleep off the jet lag. But after my bath I didn't feel sleepy anymore, so I went back to the airport for a walk and to check out the wonder emporium of available goods at the Tesco Extra. I bought some Dairy Milk and Coca Cola and sat down for a bit, and enjoyed not being stared at.
It was still only around 2 in the afternoon. Although I'd been travelling for what seemed like days, I'd gained 5 and a half hours due to the time difference, so it was still pretty early. And then it dawned on me. I'm in Scotland now, I know how stuff works. I got some internet, checked out the train times and realised I could still get home tonight. The massive snaking queue of British Airways passengers in the airport, the near death experience I'd had on the flight to Glasgow, and the confidence I'd gained from two weeks doing crazy shit in the most bonkers place I've ever been all contributed to a feeling of wanting to take my life back from the airline. I'm not one of those poor Indians trying to get connecting flights, I'm British, I'm less than 300 miles from home, and I know how this shit works.
So I bought £3 worth of coin operated internet time, I bought myself a ticket on trainline.com, I wrote down the booking reference, I left my very pleasant Holiday Inn room behind, I walked past the still massive snaking British Airways queue, I got the shuttle bus to the train station, I lugged my bike, suitcase and rucksack through the streets of Glasgow for a bit, I collected my tickets, I got on my train to Darlington, I got Ruth to pick me up and I came home. Ruth made me a pizza, I drank tea from my own cups and I slept in my own bed.
I woke up this morning in my own bed, Ruth was there, she made me some coffee while I looked out of the window at the snow, and I said to her.
'I had the most amazing dream. I dreamt I went to India to meet Dean and I took my bike with me. It was the strangest place I'd ever been, it was sunny every day, everyone spoke English but no-one understood it, there was rubble everywhere, no-one ever brought me anything I asked for, I had to fend off beggars, touts and tuktuk drivers in the street, I went to the Taj Mahal and got my polos confiscated, I saw people and dogs sleeping in the street, I couldn't tell what anything was, or what anyone was doing, I got sunburnt in January in Rishikesh, which was full of unsmiling national stereotypes wearing clothes made from old curtains and with tea cosies on their heads, I nearly died in a plane crash and then I went to Glasgow, which was full of magical helpful Scottish people, who helped me find the way home'.
And then she told me something that completely took me by surprise.
She told me it wasn't a dream.
Brilliant! I'm enjoying reading your blog, I have lots to catch up on! How wonderful that you went out to spend time with Dean.
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