Extremes in India: 4 stories in 8 days
Four stories from eight days in India: a 48-hour Air India saga, VIP hospitality and a president, crashing a wedding with a Bollywood dance, and a demonetization cash crunch.
Pt 1/4: Mutiny on Air India
(originally posted December 4, 2016 on dazuck.com)
I might have a bit of a reputation for crazy plane delays, re-routings, and other bad luck on long journeys. Nik might have even worse luck than me. So we should probably have been more prepared for a less-than-smooth trip from Bangkok to Amritsar, but a comedy of errors from us and Air India led to an unexpected 48 hour journey. Here’s the rough retroactive time-blog:
Nov 19
9pm: online check-in won’t go through for our international flight: Bangkok > Delhi > Amritsar. No big deal, we’ll check-in live tomorrow morning. It’s a 9am flight so we’ll wake up at 6 to subway there.
9/20
6:45am: Google Maps’ routing seems a bit weird. This might take longer than we expected.
8:02am: It turns out that Air India’s check-in desk closes 60 minutes before departure, which is 58 minutes from now. There’s time, there’s will, but there’s no way in. There goes flight #1.
10am: $12 worth of international phone calls later and we’re booked on the same itinerary tomorrow. Back to Bangkok for a Saturday night and let’s try this again.
9/21
7:30am: through security with plenty of time to spare!
9am: still waiting at the gate at departure time, so…guessing we’re delayed?
9:45am: “Hello ladies and gentlemen. Due to a technical issue, this flight is delayed. The new departure time will be 10am. We will board as soon as possible.” hmmm
11am: new departure time set for 11:15am. Funny pattern.
12pm: Coupons for coffee and vague directions to find the new gate.
1:30pm: new departure time 1:45pm. Pattern seeming less funny.
2:15pm: new departure time set for 2:30pm. The connection on our 5-hour layover slips away.
2:30pm: we’re boarding! Maybe if they make up time in the air we’ll make it…
3:30pm: we’ve boarded, but now we’re just sitting here and it seems the AC doesn’t work. I’m watching Captain America on the seatback and sweating like I’m in one of the battle scenes myself.
4pm: still no AC, still no movement, no announcement from the captain and I’m not sure where the crew is because Nik has started passing out water in the aisles himself.
4:30pm: “Please deboard.” (Actually it took about 4 announcements and some shouting, but that was the gist).
4:45pm: This is chaos. It’s like they’ve never deboarded a plane before. Nobody from the airline seems to know whether we should stay at the gate or leave. It’s actually not that clear who even works for the airline. One person who was at the gate is leading a group to exit through customs, but there are two customs areas plus a ‘special customs’ area and about a third of the group heads to each. A security guard has NIk’s passport and started to walk away with it. After chasing him down we scramble to find part of the group again, because there’s no central place to go get information, so that’s really our only hope. There’s rumors of a hotel in Bangkok for the night but no clarity how we get there, when we’d fly out, or who can tell us these things. The flight crew look even more confused than we are, and apparently each has different information because they are yelling at eachother in Thai. I actually feel more pity than frustration — having nothing on the calendar for, well ever, helps ease stress.
5pm: a new rumor spreads just before we exit customs — the flight ‘might’ take off after all in a couple hours. You can wait at the gate or go to the hotel, but if you leave the airport there’s no getting back in.
5:30pm: someone from Air India confirms those rumors after 30 minutes of questions. Sure, someone else from Air India denies them but we’re taking the optimistic approach
6:30pm: more food/drink vouchers
7:30pm: we’re boarding! (again)
8pm: still seems to be no air conditioning. It is HOT
9pm: so, we’re still sitting here with no AC. The crew has no idea what’s happening; seems like the captain is telling them exactly as little as he’s telling us. A lot of passengers are getting angry. One just led a group up from the back and yelled to the plane “Will you stand with us! This is unacceptable. We need to stand and make them tell us what is going on in front!” Another group tells him to ‘give it 10 more minutes, and then we will go.” Are we literally about to have a mutiny onboard?
9:05pm: plane starts moving. Is it bad I’m slightly disappointed we didn’t get to see what would happen in 5 minutes?
11:30pm-2am: flight lands in Delhi and we work with ~19 Air India staff to find our way to a hotel for the night (aka 2 hours) before our new flight to Amrtisar at 7am tomorrow — check-in by 5am latest.
9/22:
4:30am: wake-up. 2 hours of sleep sucks.
5am: airport, check-in, security, gate. 90 minutes before boarding. Try to stay awake.
8am: land in Amritsar, taxi to hotel, check-in, pass out.
9am: part 1 officially ends, and part 2 is about to begin. And oh how different it would be.
Pt 2/4: Hello, Madame President
(originally posted December 3, 2016 on dazuck.com)
Most of this blog will aim to be my reflections rather than FOMO-inducing travel stories and photos. This post will be an exception.
While we were waiting in Bangkok, our friend Rob sent us a string of messages from Amritsar that amounted to “We met the best host ever on the plane who is taking us VIP to all the best things to see in Amrtisar and has invited us to his family’s University/hotel/home/candy shop in the next town over.” While disappointed that we had missed day 1, there was lots of potential for the next couple days. A driver was waiting to take us to Jalandhar on Monday morning to get started.
The first hint of how we’d be rolling around came as we pulled into Lovely Professional University. You know how ski patrol wave at you to slow down on main runs at busy times? That’s how our driver treated the security guard waving him to stop at the gate to the admin building. Our new host (and bff) Pratham welcomed us and ushered us into what felt like a cross between the control room in Star Trek and a Miami hotel suite. It turned out to be the office of the Chancellor, aka his father. We sat down on the couches, chatted as the first commencement ceremony wrapped up, and tried to act comfortable as people in suits brought us coffee and tea.
Why act comfortable? I’m normally very at home in flip flops and t-shirts.
But beach attire quickly goes from appropriate to awkward to downright silly when you’re sitting in a formal office and a commencement procession walks in and you get introduced to the honored guest: the President of Mauritius. (photo proof coming soon)
After brief introductions, the returning party took seats at the other bank of couches in the office. And then Pratham beckoned us to pull up chairs and join. So we did. And for a good 20–30 minutes our group chatted with the President about her unexpected rise in politics, her background in business, the African Union, her policies and initiatives, her ties to India and LPU, and I’m sure plenty of other things I missed as I marveled at the absurdity of what was happening.
We wrapped up the conversation without embarrassing ourselves too badly (except for the initial impression, obviously) and adjourned to a tour of campus (plenty of thoughts on that coming soon), a many-course lunch, and more coffee and tea. Then it was time for the afternoon commencement ceremony.
Earlier in the day I had assumed we’d sit in the back and observe from a distance. By now, I knew better.
Still in casual gear, we followed Pratham’s lead and walked with the marching band into the auditorium, apparently part of the procession. Then he beckoned us into a couple of large leather couches in the front row. Alright, time to feel even more out of place than when meeting the president. After the speeches — 3 of which referenced the ‘visitors from the US/Harvard’ — it was time to move onto an even sweeter part of the day.
We got back to the Chancellor’s office and the procession congregated again, and we briefly milled and drank tea before Pratham ushered us back out to cars in a bit of a hurry. “We want to be part of the motorcade to avoid traffic!” That would be the presidential motorcade, which was taking us to his family’s emblematic sweets factory, Lovely Sweets. After the easiest in-India drive we’d ever seen, and working our way through the crowd outside waiting for the shop to reopen, we entered a 5-story Indian sweets emporium. Of course we made no real decisions — Pratham took us from counter to counter and ordered samples of his favorite candies — nuts and fruits and chocolates and yogurts and pastries and so many combos I can’t really remember — working our way up floor by floor. At one point, so beyond stuffed from 3 courses of lunch and ~10 courses of dessert already, his uncle came to say hi and that Pratham didn’t know what was best and that we should start the tour over with him. Torn between our stomachs and politeness, we exchanged panicked looks until Pratham saved us.
The top floor of the factory is a display of the box sets that Lovely Sweets creates for wedding invitations, of which even the most modest are impressive when you realize they are sent to every guest. I believe it was around here we started discussing what to bring Kunal for his wedding as a gift from our group, and in addition to a sweets box Pratham excitedly suggested “You should do a Bollywood dance!” Apparently, this was tradition and everyone loved folks who did a prepared dance at the wedding, showing respect and helping start the party. Not that any of us had any Bollywood experience, or general dance skill, or time to learn with the wedding 24 hours away.
As soon as we were back at LPU, Pratham arranged for one of the university dance teachers to choreograph a popular song for us. 3 hours of practice, a lot of patience and MANY simplifications from our teacher, stifled laughs from Pratham and his mother, and we kind of had it a little bit down. We could, with a bit more practice and a few drinks, try it at the wedding tomorrow.
Pratham had other ideas (we secretly think it was his self-reward for the insane hospitality he’d been showing us): there was a “One-World Festival” as part of the commencement ceremony, with thousands of students visiting, a few ambassadors to India in the front row, and celebrations of various cultures with dance and other performances. Nobody had done the USA yet. We should do our dance for the whole school, Pratham suggested. I don’t think any of us loved this idea, but at this point Pratham’s word was law, so after the LPU MC pumped us up to the crowd (“this has never been done before, we’re making history here!”) here’s the embarrassing result:
<iframe width=”597" height=”336" src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/0SpJ5mF5SL8" frameborder=”0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Sadly, at this point it was time to say goodbye to LPU and our hosts, head back to Amritsar for the night, and catch our flight to the wedding (and our real performance) the next day
Pt 3/4: a wedding and a dance
(originally published on December 2, 2016 on dazuck.com)
Now, the reason we were in India to begin with: the Indian wedding. Must have been a good friend to come all this way, right (hey — even from Thailand it’s a decent flight)? Nope, we knew all of 1 person at the wedding before this week and had only just learned the bride and groom’s names. We were crashing a wedding (with the groom’s blessing, but I’m still counting it). How was it? I’ll let this video — organized by our new best friend Pratham — speak for itself.
Note: Before you watch, know that my route at the end was actually planned — thanks for bailing on the choreography, Nik
Pt 4/4: no rupees mo’ problems
(originally published December 1, 2016 on dazuck.com)
Okay, so now we’ve been shuttled in by Air India, around Amritsar by Pratham, and the wedding by Kunal. Is our group still capable of traveling when we have to do things for ourselves? I haven’t mentioned this yet, but while we were there the entire country was out of currency. This hadn’t mattered much up to now, but it was about to get pretty relevant.
First up is the train trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. It’s a pilgrimage made by ~4 million people each year, so should be manageable. After the 1-hour Uber to the train station at 1pm, we weaved our way to the front to find the ticket desk and bounced from window to window, finally figuring out we had to fill out a slip from counter 5 (bookings) and then take it to counter 3 (reservations). Once there though, we found out that contrary to our hotel’s claim we couldn’t use credit card, and didn’t have enough cash. So Nik took my USD cash reserves into a random market a short ride away to trade a sketchy FX shop for more rupees; meanwhile Rob watched the bags while I wandered around the station looking for the girls who had taken a separate taxi and not yet turned up.
This went on for an hour or so. In the meantime we found out about a tourist bureau upstairs, but they also didn’t take credit cards so while more comfortable, we were still missing cash and missing our full group and missing trains to Agra in the meantime. There were a few more left, but most were fully booked which meant we’d have to by a non-reserved ticket and hope to get a seat. Given how confused we were at this point, that seemed unlikely to go well.
Around 6pm things started to come together. Nik got back with cash, we got word from the girls that they were here and had followed a man to a travel agency, and that we could get a van to Agra for $180. More than the train, slower than the train, less comfortable than the train. But we’d get there tonight and see the Taj in the morning. A bit of haggling and waiting later and we were on our way. 6 hours later (1am) and we were there in our sketchy hotel.
I won’t waste much text on the Taj since plenty of others have, but here’s a picture to prove we made it.
Okay, so that’s a monkey stealing a tourist’s snacks on the way into the Taj, which was pretty funny. But also the Taj was pretty damn grand.
Post-Taj, I headed back to Delhi while Nik went for Jarpur and the rest of the crew flew home. I’d spend a couple days there, tour some education groups (post pending), then meet back up with Nik to head north to the Himalayas or south to Bombay for a week. Or, that was the plan.
Instead, I spent my non-education time in Delhi trying not to spend ANY cash, since I was down to 180 rupees and every ATM was out or had a 3 hour line that would run it down before me.
My quick guide on how to survive 3 days on 180 rupees in cash when most places are cash-only (~$2.75):
- Piss off the hostel. Turns out if your laundry smells bad enough they let you do a load even if you can’t pay for it.
- Dehydrate between visits to McDonalds, where you can buy water with credit card.
- Uber. It’s has your credit card on file, which subway doesn’t take. Great, until your phone dies…
- Walk a LOT. I walked 5 hours back to the hostel through Delhi because the subway was too pricey. This was great though (at least 3–4 hours of it) as I got to wander through random parks and under-freeway markets I never would have seen.
- When you really get low, buy your flight out because trying to eek out another week in Simla could go from adventurous to painful. Come back another time, and go decompress in Delhi’s polar opposite (Singapore) for now.
- Stop faux-complaining; about a quarter of the Indian population lives on that budget constantly, without credit cards and Uber as bailouts.
Originally published on Medium/Zig Zag Zuck.