Day 01 - Travel

The original plan was that we would go to Jayanagar 4th Block Bus Stand and catch the Vayu Vajra BIAS 5 or BIAS 12, at 6 am on 21 May 2011. But true to Indian Standard Time Schedule, we reached the place at 6:40. And my dad was anxious that we will be late to catch the flight. So we caught a taxi on the road and made it to the airport in less than an hour.

We checked in before 8 for a 9.15 flight and loitered around the departure terminal eating breakfast (which my mother had made and packed the previous night) and watched other people loitering. At 9.10 my mother decided she needed a coffee before takeoff and we had to wait for 15 minutes for her to finish the coffee. And we ended up making the aircraft wait and we were the last people on board! What an roller-coaster!

That is how we started the holiday and it was a bad omen for things to come..

Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain, from the flight deck. We have just taken off from Bangalore International Airport (Thanks, we did'nt know) and are flying in a north-north-westward direction, at an altitude of 37000 feet, at 850 kmph. The outside temperature is -47 Decrees Celsius! Enjoy your flight.. (ya right!)

And my father started telling me that the destination was Hyderabad. I thought we were flying to NSCBIA,(Netaji Subash Chandra Bose International Airport) Kolkota! Its like the Sardarji Joke.. What technology! One plane, two destinations! Then after landing he tells me.. He thought there was a stopover in Hyderabad. But thank god no, we reached Kolkota in exactly 3 hours (12:30). The landing was rough and the plane bounced twice before rolling down the runway and taxing to the domestic terminal..

Time Time Time

Window with a wingtip

NSCBIA Gate 3A

Room Kanchenjunga, The Swiss Hotel, Darjeeling

Some idiot of a travel agent had booked us on a separate plane from Kolkota to Bagdogra. NOT a connecting flight. So we had to check out, collect our baggage in Kolkota and walk all the way around and check in at the departure gate again for the flight to Bagdogra! What a colossal waste of time!

Then we took off from Kolkota late (14:30). We were loitering in Gate 3A for nearly an hour for the flight! The gate was not even open, the aircraft was not even in the airport! Then we reached Bagdogra at 15:30, and started to look for the taxi which was supposed to be waiting to take us to Darjeeling.

We found it at 16:00 and started the drive, having momos in a small wayside tea stall at 17:00 (5 pm) finally lunch! And after a five hour drive up the mountain we reached the Swiss Hotel in Gorkhaland (Darjeeling) at 9 pm and to our chagrin discovered that there was no dinner and had to wait one hour for them to cook it. It was cold and we were tired. my mother who is diabetic started to go hypoglycemic. we scrambled for a glass of milk, gulped down some hard rotis and went to sleep in a icebox of a hotel room..

Thus ended the first day of our travel.. we had arrived battered and bruised in Darjeeling at the height of the tourist season! what rotten luck!