The closer I’m staying to my destination, the more likely it is that I’m going to be late. I deliberately stayed in Bagdogra because it was 15 minutes from the airport. Despite getting up quite early, I was running late.
When I emerged from my room, the homestay owner asked me when my flight was. When I told her, she said she had knocked on my door earlier but there was no response. She added she wished she’d asked me yesterday what time my flight was!
There were unlikely to be taxis right now. She said this as she disappeared to ask her husband if he could take me. He could — and we left straight away.
There was some traffic on the way to the airport. But the husband skilfully weaved through it and got me to the airport as quickly as possible.
I’d checked in for my flight yesterday and just had to drop off my bag. The bag drop queue, in all the Indian airports I’ve been to, was combined with the check-in queue. There was little time to be saved by checking in over the web! You ended up in the same queue as those who had not checked in. And even if you’ve checked in, the airline staff still print out a boarding pass. They don’t ask you to use the electronic one. Although that’s wasteful, the boarding passes do make good bookmarks and are reminders of places you’ve been to.
As I joined the queue, one of the IndiGo airline staff said that I had to get my check-in bag scannned. This is a feature of Indian airports I’d not seen elsewhere. Normally the scanner is by the entrance but this time it wasn’t, which is why I’d missed it. I went back and queued to get my check-in bag scanned.
Task one done, I rejoined the check-in/bag drop queue. It moved quickly and I was soon ready for security.
Throughout this India trip, my carry-on luggage has been repeatedly stopped. It’s usually something to do with camera batteries, power packs, cables, or other electronic equipment. Despite signs telling you to carry rechargeable batteries and power packs in the carry-on luggage, the security staff always end up wanting to look at my battery power pack. This time, I was asked about its capacity (in mAh)!
The flight itself was smooth. On landing in Bangalore airport, I saw the above art work on my way to the exit. I couldn’t take a proper photo because there was construction work going on next to it. It’s referring to Srinivasa Ramanujan, the great Indian mathematician. Last year, I read a biography of him. The Man Who Knew Infinity inspired a film of the same name. It’s an incredible and tragic story of a man who, raised in poverty without formal schooling, practically reinvents maths. Then he goes on to create new maths that is still being analysed today.
On exiting the airport, I headed to the Uber taxi rank. This area was familiar from my trip here a month ago.
I booked into the same hostel as before (Locul Midtown). In the early evening, I found a nearby store that sold healthy food. Not wanting to eat out, I bought some wholewheat pasta and sauce. That evening I made a simple but tasty pasta dish.
In the kitchen was a young German eating a yellow-fleshed watermelon, which was unusual. He shared some with me. He turned out to be a recent medical graduate who’d just finished a brief internship in Sri Lanka. Now he was travelling around India. We had a good discussion about German and European politics. Like me, he was interested in economics.
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