London-Mumbai
Our trip to the airport in London went smoothly except that it was at evening rush hour so it took an hour , and Dee noticed that our driver was periodically nodding off so she kept up small talk with him to help him stay more alert. Fortunately there was no focus on baggage weight at check in and we slowly progressed through the security check. The security area was severely littered with empty water bottles and was rather inefficient, but all the staff were nice. I had a bit of a concern when the one of the security staff took my guitar aside, which I was now ‘carrying on’ along with a carry on bag, and showed it to another. They entered in to a discussion for about two minutes, intermittently pointing at part of the case. Eventually they gave it to another person who looked at it and handed it to me. I asked what the issue was and she told me that they were not allowed to let any thing though security that said ‘bomb’ on it. My case has a very old sticker that says ‘Bread not bombs’. They let it go but told me to try to keep the sticker hidden until I was on the plane. It is interesting how rules and regulations develop in reaction to some event, fortunately there are still some people who think about what they are doing and what is behind the rule.
We wanted to look through the duty free area and pick up some scotch to take with us to India did look around briefly but did not take advantage of it out of concern for the weight limitation issues that we may face in Mumbai. Next Dee wanted to call some friends in the States to check on her dogs, but as she was preparing to do so I noted that the electronic flight status board indicated that our flight was no longer ‘boarding’ but now ‘closing’. This was a surprise as it was still 50 minutes to departure time. She skipped the call and off we rushed to find a nearly empty boarding area. We boarded, settled in, were offered orange juice and champagne and the waited in our seats for what turned out to be the normal departure time. The call could have easily been made. I knew that in the US flights are not allowed to leave the gate without all the passengers prior to scheduled departure time but I wasn’t sure about London. Now I know, the call could have been made.
The flight was reasonably comfortable, but we still both have a hard time sleeping well on a plane. None-the-less, I got about 4 to 5 hours of sleep and was clear headed on arrival to Mumbai. Even though the international airport was poorly air-conditioned, there was some. The process of immigration, customs clearance, money exchange, checking our bags in at the international airport for travel on via the domestic airport and taking the shuttle to the domestic airport went very smoothly. This is notable as in the past I have been hung up for hours to days by this process. The domestic airport has had a major refurbishment. It is clean, bright, airy and coolly comfortable It is as nice as most medium sized airports in the US. We had to again go through security and it was rather inefficient and ineffective. Even though we were not supposed to bring any fluids through, I noticed when I picked up my bag on the other side that in an outer pocket I still had a full bottle of water! I looked at the screening person and they were not looking at the display at all. In the international airport when we rechecked our bags that person also did not seem to be paying any attention to the display. Maybe it’s not necessary because out of sight they may well go through the checked bags carefully looking for something to steal! We’ll see. That may not be fair. I have never had anything taken from my bags in Indian airports, only in the US and Cayman Islands.
So, there you are.
