Travel Blog - India
More on Calcutta
Arrival
Most people who know me, know that I love India and if broached upon the subject will gladly talk ad infinitum on the joy of travelling here. However, when I've been away from India for a while, there is a part of me which doubts my own 'hype' and there is a niggle, a small fear if you like, that it might not quite live up to my own lofty expectations.
I had been living in Cambodia for the last year and a bit doing that most multi-national of jobs and general passport to further travels - teaching English language. End time there was suddenly very, well... sudden and I hardly had time to think about my travels in India, short of arranging the actual visa itself - a typical Indian bureaucratic experience involving several trips to the embassy using a mixture of placation and protest to get my 6 month, double-entry visa. Just short of my multi-entry hopes but a vast improvement on the initial offer of a 2 month single entry. So it wasn't until I got to Bangkok airport that I actually had time to think about India properly and immediately got that butterflies in your stomach feeling. This is my fourth time to India since I first went there 10 years ago but each time I go I still get those first time nerves.
My small fear of disappointment was significantly reduced during the short flight to Calcutta, or Kolkata as it is now referred to. While the rest of the world understands and follows accepted norms of in-flight travel, India, as with so many other things, does it with its own uniquely Indian twist. The 30kg baggage limit on Air-India's budget offspring Air-India Express, while other budget airlines want you to bring nothing but a briefcase, was an initial indicator of this. Sure enough, boxes, crates as well as good old-fashioned suitcases were all being checked in. No doubt a significant amount of the Bengali Indians had been on a shopping blitz in Bangkok. I, for my own part, was grateful as I had a small issue of 45kg of luggage to get through - I had amassed some things during my time in Cambodia although camera gear also knocked into this total substantially. I managed to get 28kg checked-in and sneaked through the remaing as carry-on. (A good chunk of this is getting shipped home in sewn cloth bags finished off with multiple wax seals by the 'tailors', who congregate around the streets of India's post offices - India's parcel post. Two or three months later, they invariably arrive).
Now I know we all have had our fair share of delayed flights and take-offs but on the whole I've generally gotten used to flights being fairly punctual. I had a feeling that this particualar one wouldn't be. I made sure to get on board as early as possible as I had a sneaky feeling that I wasn't the only one with an excess of carry-on luggage. Sure enough, there was a prolonged struggle until finally the last piece of baggage was stuffed into the already overstuffed overhead compartments.
Now, you might have noticed those enthusiastic people with aisle seats who leap up to get their luggage as soon as the plane has landed and the fasten seat-belt sign turns off. Well on a predominantly Indian flight, those enthusiastic people are everyone, and don't let having a window seat, with two people in your way, be a hindrance in your quest to get to the overstuffed overhead compartments. The baggage reclaim at Netaji Subhash Bose International Airport rotates at a whopping one suitcase per minute. I feel reassured that old India, even with its new hyper-cyber IT clothes, won't let my expectations down.
I share an Ambassador taxi into the centre with two English girls who are only spending a day here before flying out to Goa the following morning. The taxi journey further reassures me that all is well in India. Our taxi driver switches from pleasant conversation to hurling abuse at the 'bloody idiots' who share the road with us (roll your mouse over the image), all while hurtling through non-existant gaps in the traffic accompanied by ubiquitous horn honking. Somewhere along the way, my small fear gets abandoned by the roadside.
'Now as I was saying'/'Bloody idiot drivers'
Saturday, 4th April 2008