On my recent trip to Europe from Australia. I flew with Air India which included an overnight stop-over in New Delhi. The flight over was only half full so my girlfriend and I had an extra seat to stretch out in. The noteworthy thing about the flight, that I'd never seen before in all my years flying, was that the windows on the plane didn't have any shades. Instead, each window had a button that controlled the tint of the window. During the flight, the cabin crew over rided the controls and all windows were set to full tint so that people could sleep. However, the tint was a dark, deep blue. Looking out the window was like being at an aquarium.
The airline organised a hotel at the airport for the passengers in transit but we had decided to spend the night at a hotel in the city as we'd never been to India before. A driver picked us up at the airport and drove us to the hotel. It was just starting to get dark by this stage and we were stuck in peak hour traffic. There didn't appear to be any rules. Cars, trucks, mopeds, tuk tuk's just went in whatever direction they wanted. The lane markings on the road were ignored. It reminded me very much of Bangkok or some parts of Peru. There were quite a few similarities with Latin America - stalls on the side of the road, concrete buildings.
It was very hot and muggy, but we were happy to escape the winter weather in Australia. We stayed at a nice clean hotel in the nieghbourhood of Paharganj. We found what looked like a clean restaurant close to the hotel for dinner. The last thing we wanted was to catch Dehli belly. We had a flight to Italy the next day. One difference between Latin America and India is the customer service. In India the waiters were keen to attend to the customers quickly. In Latin America service is when the waiter feels like it.
We woke automatically at 5:30am in the morning because of the time difference with Australia. This would have been 10am in Canberra. After breakfast, we went for a walk looking for souvenirs and ended up in a tuk tuk going to a market. But just like Thailand, the driver just took us to where he wanted - expensive tourist stores. So in the end, we just told him to take us back to our hotel and we walked around the neighbourhood there, taking in the hustle and bustle of people going about their business. In turn, we received a lot of looks from the locals. A few struck up a conversation. They were quite friendly. Whilst exploring, we found a mobile cart with some cheap souvenirs that we bought for our friends.
I thought airport security in the States was tight. The security at New Delhi shits all over anywhere else. We had to show our travel itinerary and passports just to enter the airport. Then there was check-in, followed by immigration to get to the departure gates. We had to be searched by a metal detector, twice. The women had their search carried out inside a small curtained off booth for privacy. Our boarding passes were stamped and we were given a tag to put on our carry-on luggage, which was then also stamped.
To enter the departure gate we went through more security that checked our passports and boarding passes. Because of my name on my passport, the security guard was reluctant to let me through. I don’t know. Maybe he thought it was a fake name and fake passport. But the passport is seven years old and is almost full of stamps. How could I have got away with it for so long, if it were fake? Eventually, he stamped my boarding pass and let me through.
Passengers for our flight were called to board. As is customary, our boarding passes were checked. Three guys in front of us were turned back because they were missing one of the security stamps. We walked down the corridor to the plane and along the way there was security checking if we had tags on our carry-on luggage, and that they were stamped. We got to a small foyer, metres from the plane, where security searched through our bags. Then just one step from boarding the plane a security guy stopped us again. Were we ever going to get on this plane? He checked our boarding pass and gave it another stamp. And then we boarded the plane. The cabin crew greeted us, “Namaste,” and we went to our seats 15B and C. We joked about how we expected security to be waiting for us in our seats. But we had passed through all the security and we then had a relaxing flight to Milan.
