India in Three Days

Hi everyone! I'm back from a truly epic one-week business trip that involved planes, trains, and automobiles galore. I started out Monday morning scrambling to catch the airport express train, which means first getting to Tokyo Station from my house. Luckily I got on the correct train and made to the flight on time. I flew about 4 hours to Hong Kong where I had business meetings on Monday afternoon and all day Tuesday. The train from the Hong Kong airport to downtown is truly a beautiful experience, and quite a contrast to my scramble in Tokyo. In Hong Kong, the train takes you right downtown and our office is just next door.  I had dinner one night with a good friend at an amazing Vietnamese restaurant, and the next night with a small group of colleagues at a very good Italian restaurant.

Then I was off to New Delhi, which is...maybe another 4.5 hours from Hong Kong. The New Delhi international airport is a complete wreck, and it's a scary first impression to get of a country. I was told, however, that all the airports have been privatized and there are renovations occurring. I met my colleague outside the baggage claim and we headed over to our office. And I continued to be in shock for the next two days over how different India is from anywhere else I've ever been. 

We had to drive south of Pune, and drive and drive, passing fields and seeing the monsoons roll in.  The landscape itself was reminiscent of Oahu's central valley. Every so often we would pass a village. At one point we pulled over at the bus station in Sangli to ask directions, but that is as close as I can get to figuring out where we actually ended up to do our factory review. 

Once that was over, we headed to the air strip in Kolhapur to catch the only flight out each day. I was dying to take pictures there, but the various officials were very stern about no photos allowed. Quite frankly, I never imagined I'd ever experience such a place. The strip is the middle of a bunch of fields, and you pull up to a building where there are various people loitering about. There is just one door into the place, where my paperwork was checked several times by various people in uniform. Then there was a desultory baggage screening, many tags and stamps, and we were finally able to check in. I was happy that I had the travel agent correct my name on the ticket, since they had initially used my nickname instead of the name on my passport. Then we went through the security checkpoint, I used the women's room (squat toilet with a bucket of water for washing), and waited for the airplane to arrive. At that point, my colleague pointed out that the plane could fit a maximum of 40 passengers, yet there were at least two hundred people at the air strip doing various things. I had to once again go have my bag checked against my ticket, and finally we walked down the strip and got into the turbo prop. Unfortunately, the monsoon started in the region that very day, and our one-hour flight to Mumbai turned into a 2.5-hour flight while we waited for the weather to clear sufficiently for landing. And yes, it was quite bumpy! The worst part, for this American, was the overwhelming smell of overheated men on the plane. Other than the flight attendant, I was the only woman on the plane. 

The next afternoon I headed to the New Delhi domestic airport to fly to Pune on Jet Lite, a small airline that has been acquired recently by Jet Airways. I met a different colleague at the airport curb and proceeded to wind my way through a morass of people and construction to get inside. I was assured the airline is just fine despite the level of chaos and disorganization at the terminal. At Pune, surprise! the airport was also under construction. My colleague explained that there's been so much explosive growth in India over the last five years that none of the infrastructure can keep up. Somehow, the fact that the weather was only 90 degrees instead of over 100 like Delhi made this airport much more bearable. We headed off to look at factories, and the next morning embarked on a four-hour road trip to a rural industrial park in the middle of nowhere.

We finally arrived at the Mumbai domestic airport, which has been beautifully renovated. I finally got to see what Indian airport privatization is capable of! Because of the delays, I only had enough time for lunch and about 30 minutes of souvenir shopping at a hotel before we had to go catch the next flight. Sadly, the Mumbai international airport is, dare I assume you can guess?, under renovation. I was flying the All Nippon Airways business jet home, and as we were driving along the terminal looking for the listing for ANA, I noticed an enormous number of people gathered at the terminal entrances. Unfortunately, we missed the listing so I said goodbye to my colleague and walked back, threading my way through the crowds and the monsoon mud and grime to get back to my terminal. Once inside, I was able to check in very easily using the contracted ground staff, although I did have to remind the young check in agent to put the baggage tag on my bag. Going through security was once again a hopeless jumble of bags, security guys, women frisking me behind a curtain while my carryon and laptop festered in a pile on the floor, oh, about 30 feet away and out of my sight. 

Finally, at long last, I found myself in the business class lounge, where I took refuge in the bathroom and took stock of 14 hours of Indian travel. It was not pretty! Luckily, I thought to pull out a change of clothes from my suitcase so I washed up as best I could and changed for the flight. The ANA flight from Mumbai to Tokyo is an all business class jet, with just 36 passengers on the flight and 4 or 5 flight attendants. Heaven! The moment I stepped on board, a sense of Japanese calm and order took over and I enjoyed a relaxing 9.5-hour flight back to Tokyo. Before I knew it we were landing at Narita airport at 9:00 this morning, and I was home just two hours later after taking the Friendly Airport Limousine Bus back into the city.