Delhi, it’s a mess.

Friday, July 31st, 2009

What is so bad about Delhi many ask?  Well for starters, have you ever been there?  I have, and its like going to NYC in the heat of summer; not much fun.

The traffic is always horrible, the airport(s) are a mess, the mass of humanity and the constant noise, the comparisons can go on and on.  I am not a New Yorker nor am I a Delhiite, that’s my own term I think, anyway, here I am, not actually as I am now home, so I should say, there I was….  OK, there I was a day or so ago, fresh off the plane from a domestic flight; Chennai to Delhi at around 3 hours.  The flight is probably only 2.5 but you taxi after landing for at least 10 minutes.

Who ever heard of taxing for 10 minutes?  This isn’t Chicago or Atlanta where you taxi and wait, taxi and wait, taxi and wait; this is just taxi.  The planes are as slow as the cars!  I think I even heard the pilot honk his horn a time or two.  (That’s a joke of course and if you have been to India, you’re still laughing I hope.)  Anyway we taxi and ultimately deplane and collect our luggage.  Once you collect your stuff you either exit or if you have an international flight you jump on  a bus that runs every 20 minutes or so, to take you to the international terminal.  The ride is not bad despite going only 10 mph, at least you are inside the gates of the airport and most of the trip you can see the many runways and taxi ways along with the slum dwellers and their huts, not to mention the countless security posts that dot the landscape.

After catching your bus and entering the international terminal you have to be interrogated by airline security before you can check in for your flight and then subject to random screening or testing depending upon how suspicious you, your bags, or your answers seemed to the person.  You would think TSA is bad, wait until you go through their mess; it to the point of being silly.

Enough of that, got my boarding pass, cleared customs, cleared another screening deal and on to the gate, but wait, Subway first.  (Great sandwich or maybe it was just that it was 2am when I finally ate it and at that point almost anything would have tasted really good.

American Airlines, almost the pride and joy of every American traveling overseas or at least to and from a 3rd world country.  You see when you are in a place like India and Oh how I love India, (I am serious, not joking, India is my 2nd home) you realize how screwed things can get in your own head about what’s important and what isn’t and yet there is still something that reminds you as you walk the streets, talk to the people, and eat the food; I am an American and am proud of my heritage and country.  Take that thought and all you see is all this stuff which doesn’t remind you of who you are and then boom you’re at the airport and there is the trademark AA and you look out the window and there is the most beautiful bird, a 777 sitting on the tarmac waiting to take you home.

It’s just to bad you volunteer for your own non profit and thus you can’t afford to sit in any other class than coach; oh well, at least it’s a seat and it gets you where you need to go and on board there is clean water, English speaking flight attendants and some sense of Americana.

Now the mess; for whatever reason the silly Americans and Indians can’t seem to load a plane in a timely fashion.  Sure it doesn’t help the incoming flight was delayed out of Chicago and thus was 2 hours late in arriving but come on 1.5 hours to load 300 people.  Southwest could have loaded and unloaded at least 10 planes in that amount of time.

To make matters worse once you are out the door you are screened again, bags checked and double checked, another frisking and wanding and then shuttled onto a bus which drives for 5 minutes to your plane and there you sit for another 15 minutes while they load the bus ahead of you.

This entire process was almost funny but it wasn’t.  The sad part is, I don’t this this was a unique experience, this was just Delhi being Delhi.

Chennai, Hyderabad, Cochin, Trivandrum – give me any of those airports, even Bangalore any day over Delhi.  So why Delhi?  Non-stop from Chicago is why; 14 hours.  Ouch.

Well I am home now, not recovered by any stretch of the imagination, that will take a week or two, but at least I am home.  Once AA was airborne things improved though it took another 40 minutes to get airborne even after the doors were closed and cross checks complete.

I already mentioned I was home and lest you think all of Delhi is bad or a mess; well most of it is but there are still wonderful people there; a few at least, like at Subway, the Radisson and last but not least my pastor friend George.

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