Arrival In India
So here we are in Dubai Airport awaiting a connection to Bombay. It's my 7th visit to this airport this year. It is 2.30am here so 23.30 at home, almost exactly 24 hours since my last report.
Today went very much as expected. I arrived at India House at just after 8 this morning to find that it opened at half past and there was already a queue formed. Not too bad though and I was out with my visa at 09.30.
Getting my visa didn't go without a hitch though. I put the reason for my visit down as visiting a conference and because I couldn't give them an invitation letter to the conference they wouldn't give me a visa. So I asked what I would have to put down for them to be able to give me a visa and he said I would have to say I was a tourist. So I crossed out conference and put down tourist instead, and my visa was granted. It's a funny old place India House. Full of hippies waiting for a visa so that they can go and find themselves. Doesn't seem right really does it. Off to find all that freedom, but only if they can get a visa...?
Then it was back to the airport to see if I could get a flight. Remember I'm only on standby. Bless her, Debora had put me to the top of the list and even named me as a priority passenger. Never got the upgrade I was hoping for though. Still, I've got a few more air miles in the bag and with the half trip that I can claim from April I should be silver if I come back to Dubai in December.
Got sat next to the fat guy who wants both arms for some of the journey, and he snored. Quick flight though and got to watch Matrix Reloaded and Daddy Day Care. Both good films but I still don't understand the Matrix thing too well. Got to Dubai and bought myself a polo shirt. I have been in the same white shirt since seven o'clock on Thursday morning, 40 hours in total. What I need now is a clear flight to Mumbai and a good sleep in a real bed tomorrow and I'm going to blow their socks off at the conference. I will get loads of offers for work. I'm going to try and swing a two-week holiday for nothing next year if I can.
Finally got here after just 14 hours flying and waiting but 36 hours travelling and having an adventure. What a culture shock. We literally flew over wooden shack type slums on when we landed and outside the airport is exactly the same. The driving is a nightmare. Left side and right side and all that. Hotel very basic, and this is one of the top ones in Bombay. But at least the view from the windows is of the Indian Ocean. Having a rest then might go and look around the hotel a little.
I spent the day in the hotel in Bombay before going back to the airport for my connecting flight to Nagpur. On the way to the airport I took out the video and just left it running out of the cab window. Driving here is an adventure that has to be experienced to be believed. Horns are a mode of communication between the 'drivers'. You can go through a red light as long as you blow your horn and let people know. You can go the wrong way down the street, as long as you blow your horn and let people know. You can overtake a vehicle that is overtaking another vehicle as long as you blow your horn and let people know. You can even run a cyclist into a convenient ditch . . . as long as you blow your horn to let him know you are doing it, and then again to let him know that it was you who did it!
Any similarity with British driving is small. There is a right hand and a left hand side to every road, and that is where any comparison finishes. It is every man [I never saw a woman driving] for themselves. UNLESS you are a cow!!! It appears that cows have the right of way wherever they are. We were driving down one road in very slow moving traffic.
When it finally came to our turn to overtake I discovered the cause of our hold-up. A cow, poor little mite, was tired. So it sat down and went to sleep . . . in the middle of the road. Surely now I have seen it all?
Despite the level of driving ability there is still a very active and ongoing campaign for safe driving. On the main drags in the cities are a series of signs in the central reservation (no man's land!) The signs are designed to alert drivers to the dangers of driving in an unsafe manner, like driving on the pavement to undertake a bus. Each sign is in the form of a short verse obviously written by someone with a black, almost macabre, sense of humour.
"Drive with safety and get home for a safe-tea"
"Arrive home in peace, not in pieces"
I missed half of them because I was laughing so much at the last one. Surprisingly in all of the time I spent in one vehicle or another I only saw one accident. The accident involved two lorries in the middle of nowhere. A bit like hitting a tree in a desert really.
The next part of my adventure was a 70 minute flight from Bombay to Nagpur. In Bombay domestic terminal I saw a sign that again had me in stitches, although I had to go to the toilet to laugh, as it may have been a little disrespectful. At the gate to the departure lounge was a sign that listed everything that could not be carried in hand luggage. I can understand why we would not be thanked for carrying live ammunition, automatic weapons, hand grenades, clubs, crowbars or even dynamite. But pickles? What harm can you do with a pickle? "Take me to Cuba, this is not a fake jar of Branston you know." I know it is a serious business, but sometimes you just have to laugh or you would go crazy.
Nagpur is exactly in the middle of India, no more than 1500 miles from anywhere in the country. It was ten in the evening when I arrived, I was tired and a little disorientated to say the least.
However that all went out of the window when I arrived at my 'five star' hotel [that's how many I counted through the hole in the roof]. I was given a traditional Indian welcome. A beautiful young lady placed a garland of what I later found out were lilies and marigolds, around my neck. Next yet another beautiful young lady who moved around me with a scented candle on a plate of more flowers and pink rice approached me. The rice was sprinkled in my hair and I was officially welcome in India.
