Travel bummers

While returning to India this week I had high hopes of a smooth and speedy process upon my arrival into Bombay. I was seated right near the door of the plane and my bags were ‘Priority” tagged (I am discovering this is like a ‘kiss of death’ for luggage) which in theory is supposed to make them arrive among the first of the bags on the carousel. Immigration went fine and I then walked over to the baggage claim area. I waited . . . . and waited . . . . . and waited some more. Finally my bag appeared out from behind the flap door and the luggage belt immediately stopped, followed by a young man poking his head through the door letting us that was the end of the luggage. My bag was THE last one out. There were now only six people standing there out of the nearly 350 that had been on my flight. So much for making a speedy process.

I then went to get my domestic ticket re-endorsed (I had pre-poned my trip by two days), and had to wait in line behind several ‘problem cases’ that seemed to take forever. I proceeded to the check-in counter to hand over my luggage and get my boarding pass before heading to the hotel for some much needed sleep. While waiting in the line I began wondering if the driver from the hotel would still be waiting for me outside after my lengthy delay. I stood in line for nearly twenty minutes only to be told (while second in line) that the system had gone down and I needed to move to another line. I waited another twenty minutes in that line before finally getting things taken care of. I was now becoming rather annoyed at the amount of lost sleep as a result of all these factors.

I headed out the door to look for the hotel driver, who of course, was not there. I hired a taxi to drive me to the hotel. This taxi was more like a shoe box than a taxi, and after folding myself into it we began to drive off. The driver was somehow able to see through the darkness in spite of the almost totally useless headlight on the car. It had to have been something in the neighborhood of about three candle-power. The fact that the car had to be push started also did not encourage me too much.

Upon arriving at the hotel I asked why no one had been there to pick me up, and was told they had not received my arrival details. However, while filling out the form with my passport details, the desk clerk put “Amsterdam” under the field for “Arrived from”. I asked him how he knew I had arrived from Amsterdam, to which he said “That is where you came from.” I asked how he knew that. He explained that my travel agent had told them I was coming from Amsterdam. I then asked him how many flight per day go to/from Amsterdam via Bombay on any airline. He replied that there was only one flight per day to/from Amsterdam. I then asked him why, if he knew there was only one flight per day on any airline, and he knew that that is where I was coming from, did he not put two and two together to arrive at the conclusion that if I was coming from Amsterdam I MUST be on that one flight. Apparently that thought was completely new to him.

I headed to my room, frustrated at the amount of shut-eye lost to silly, uncalled for delays and hassles in the last three hours. Hopefully tomorrow would be a better day, and upon my arrival at home these frustrations would soon melt away. They did.