Nagpur
Trip Start
Sep 03, 2007
1
205
220
Trip End
Jun 17, 2009
Nagpur,
Maharashtra,
India
Friday, November 28, 2008
On the road in the people carriers at 8am and we set off on the 245km (150 miles) trip. The roads were a complete mix between rough, rutted tarmac and newly built, smooth surfaces, interspersed with bumpy earth tracks, with construction vehicles as an extra obstacle. As always there were cows, goats and dogs wandering everywhere and, on this trip, many troops of rhesus macaque monkeys wandering across and often just sitting in the middle of the road. Oxen drawn carts also slowly made their way along this highway.
The countryside was reasonably flat and a combination of small forests and cultivated fields, in which we regularly saw oxen teams pulling wooden ploughs. It was harvest time and the wheat(?) was being gathered into piles, which oxen were treading under foot to thresh off the grain, as they walked round a central pole to which their control rope was tied. The remaining straw was being piled into hay ricks nearby.
People were collecting water or washing clothes (or themselves) at the many roadside water pumps and in the few rivers we passed, the same washing activities were going on.
Around midday we stopped for a quick bite and then continued until around 3.30pm we reached the large city of 'Nagpur. Driving through the busy city traffic we arrived at the airport, with strangely not a lot of activity and not many people about, except for armed police and soldiers. Bhupendra went to one airline office and asked about our 6.40pm flight and was told that the plane was full and that we did not have any seats booked on it. Come on fellas, we're not working with fully joined up writing here!!!
New plan wanted.
Still take the overnight train? No - apart from uncertainty on train safety (some of them mice were pretty big!) we had learnt that it was our destination train station that had taken one direct terrorist attack, where many people were killed.
Fly to Mumbai airport? Three Americans in the group were confident that they could get direct flights back to the USA and opted for this. Our foreign office advice was still to stay out of Mumbai so the rest of us declined.
Stay in Nagpur overnight and fly direct to Delhi in the morning, as there were still (expensive) business class seats available. No (immediate) takers.
Take two flights tonight from Nagpur to 'Kolkata', near the east coast and then another flight from Kolkata to Delhi. This we all decided to do in order to keep moving and at least get back to a major centre, where it should be easier to make the next arrangements. Problem - the two flights were with different airlines and it was now 4.30 pm and the first flight was at 5.50pm. We booked the first flight with the airline office at the airport and then had to go back into the centre of town to find the other airline office.
The car rushed through the busy traffic, asking for directions on the way and we stopped outside a shopping mall and rushed up to the third floor offices. Yes - there were seats available and the efficient (but excruciatingly slow) process of checking our passports and typing all our details into the computer seemed to take forever. There must be no word in Hindi for 'hurry up'! The Canadians paid by credit card: no problem; I gave them my back up card and "Transaction declined - Refer to" Issuer. NOOOOO - CHUFFIN AARDVARKS!!!!! Tess from Ireland tried hers - "Declined". What's going on here? - as the clock ticks on. Pushed into a response, the supervisor admits that there is a problem with their card reader, which cannot handle new chip encoded credit cards - so now he tells us!!! He suggests that they can reserve the seats until we arrive at Kolkata and then pay for them there.
Dashing back down to the car, we return through the rush hour city streets, our driver carving up everything in sight. At the airport turnoff the police are now preventing any traffic from going into the airport. (The reason is that it is the annual time of 'Haj', when muslims make their once in a lifetime journey to Mecca. The tradition is that any one person going, has dozens of family and friends to wave him off and the police have stopped car traffic to avoid a complete snarl up.) Our driver continues away from the airport and, spotting a gap in the central reservation, hurls the car through it and back towards the airport. We are stopped by the police but Bhupendra explains about our flight and we are let through.
The previously quiet airport now has hundreds of people thronging in front of it, all getting in the way. We unload the bags and start through the series of security checks. All hold luggage is scanned and then has a security belt clamped round it and zip seals fitted. We go to check in and our luggage is overweight. We explain our circumstances but rules is rules - terrorism or not, the check-in clerk won't budge. We pass our small bag to another member of the group, who is travelling lighter and we're through.
At personal security we are scanned and frisked, as our carry-on bags are scanned. The officer asks us to open one bag and finds an umbrella - that's OK and then checks our pocket with pens in it - OK, before checking out a pair of binoculars. There's one thing after all this, it does give you confidence in flying.
The flight has been delayed a few minutes, giving us a bit of breathing space, as I don't think we would have got to check-in for the original closure time. After only ten minutes wait and we are boarding, just having enough time to say goodbye to our American friends going to Mumbai.
