Mother India up close and personal!
4/11/00
Left
late but somehow was the first to arrive at the airport. After
awhile I went to the check-in to see if anyone else in the band
had checked their bags. They hadn't. Now the waiting begins. I
arrived at 4:20pm Phil and Todd arrived at 4:50pm. I thought they
had the tickets. NO! Mark (the bass player) had them! Somehow
we talked our way inside the terminal without tickets. Time wasted
away. A man came up and said, "I'll need to check those bags
in the next ten minutes." Still no Mark. I volunteered to
wait outside for him. Minutes fly. Nerves fray and then at the
last possible moment Mark arrives with the tickets. This was ten
minutes after the guy said they were closing out the baggage check.
The odyssey gets off to a rocky start. Somehow I feel
like I've been kidnapped by the Fabulous Furry Freak Bros.!
While waiting on the tarmac we were positioned at
the end of the runway. We had to wait about 20 minutes. After
around 10 minutes or so they started landing planes on the runway
next to us. Our position was at the point where the planes first
came upon the runway and were traveling at their greatest speed
just before touchdown. I'd never had this vantage point before.
It was amazing! They were like huge birds that swooped by. Because
of the small size of the window they only came into view at the
last moment, heightening the feeling of speed.
The flight was actually quite pleasant.Good food,
a James Bond movie and all the free Heineken you could drink.
Love those Dutch!
Amsterdam, 7:30am (1:30am to me). Three hour layover.
Cheese, fruit and coffee. Gilders. Phil amazingly runs into a
friend from Woodstock in the airport! He was on his way back from
Bangalore (where we were going!) where he was studying sanskrit.
Off to Bombay (now they call it Mombai). I sat in
front of two young Indian guys who spent the first two hours of
the flight laughing and singing and banging the back of my chair.
It's now 5am to me. Luckily I convinced them to stop kicking the
chair and they fell asleep after dinner was served. 10 hrs., two
movies and two meals later we land in Bombay.
We had to take a bus to another airport on the other
side of town to get our connecting flight to Bangalore. Met a
young doctor from Australia of Indian descent on his way to Bangalore
for a family reunion as we were searching for the right bus. Finally
found it and loaded our luggage in and boarded. It was then that
he realized he didn't have his ticket. He had given it to a man
at customs and failed to retrieve it! He asked the driver to fetch
his bag but the driver refused, claiming the bag was too buried.
He seemed in a panic (I was to learn later why personally) and
rushed off asking us to please look after his bags. I can just
imagine how he felt. 3am in Bombay, it's 90°and the sweaty
street in front of the terminal is teaming with people. The young
doctor lets the bus leave with his bags and a bunch of strangers
saying they would take care of it when it was off loaded!
We make our way over to the other airport. Bombay's
still got thousands of people on the streets despite the hour.
Can't really see much out the dirty bus window. Little shops,
poor neighborhoods, shanties and lots of people. We pass by a
religious gathering of some kind (Moslem I think) with a man exhorting
the crowd through a microphone of some kind. We arrive at the
other airport and as we disembark we are greeted by a little beggar
girl. She was around 4 yrs. old in a dirty pink dress with no
adults visible. She was really cute and a very sad sight. The
first drop in the ocean of beggars I would come to see in India.
We retrieve the doctor's bag and head for the terminal.
There we settle in for the 3hr.layover. After around 15 minutes
the doctor arrives jubilent as he's found his ticket!
It's hard to describe the scene of all of us sitting
in a Bombay airport discussing prolonged life techniques with
a doctor from Louisiana via Australia via India at 3 in the morning.
Then an Indian women who overheard us joins in. Turns out she's
a doctor too. I'm not in Kansas anymore!
I tried to tell everyone that our flight to Bangalore
was on a turbo-prop airplane, but no one believed me. Sure enough,
off we go on a little puddle-jumper. Well almost. We sat out on
the tarmac for almost an hour while one of the crew tried to fix
the radar. Not good! Finally back to the hanger for a new plane
but no! We get back and they actually fix it and back out on the
tarmac we go. Total delay time 1 1/2 hrs.! Problem is our Tibetan
handler is waiting in Bangalore and we have no way to contact
him. We just have to hope he will wait.
Perhaps a word about going through customs in India
would be appropriate. When you come through customs in India you
surrender your bags and they're searched (at least mine was because
I discovered things mixed around.) Then you go through to another
room and identify your bags, whereupon they are checked
onto the flight. They now have white security tape on them that
must not be removed. I had no problems but Phil had to argue to
check the guitars as carry-ons on the flight from Bombay to Bangalore.
We saw the sunrise about mid-flight to Bangalore.
At first, brilliant reds and purples that fired the tops of the
clouds. Below, the countryside still slept under the cover of
darkness; the lights of the villages like small jewels on velvet.
I now realize this is the perfect metaphor for India. Great, shining
beauty with darkness just below.
As we come in on approach I see that this part of
India is lush green. Finally we land in Bangalore fully 2 hrs.late.
We didn't know what to expect. Had no idea about our
rooms, the venue or if our handler was even going to meet us.
I would get used to the idea of not exactly knowing what was happening
until it was actually happening. Good news! A Tibetan guide and
an Indian driver were waiting for us! Off we went. The airport
was north of town about 20 minutes. Quickly I found out that people
love their horns in this country! In fact, most of the trucks
have signs on the back saying, "SOUND HORN!!"
Now the moment arrives. Would we be in some 3rd world
fleabag, an o.k. economy or something real nice? We pull into
a big place; out front there are uniformed guys to open your doors.
So far so good. The lobby is in a huge 5 story atrium with glass
elevators. I turn to Mark and say," It looks like we really
stepped in it." Our rooms are serious. Mahogany furniture
and paneling. Huge beds; monagramed towels ,the works. And there's
a stocked bar! To check into a 4 star hotel was way beyond
our expectations. So after 27 hrs. of traveling I pass out in
a comfortable bed in Bangalore, India.