Situation till now -Trip planned, packing done, at the airport
We took the good ol Meru cabs to reach the airport and wow what a nice airport. I love India for the fact that for 70 million travelers (annually) all across India, we have spent in excess of $8 billion but for the , 8.9 billion train traveling people we spend nothing and literally each month we have a fatal train accident. Even after this, most upper / rich Indians keep cribbing how bad the airports are..One day, I hope in my lifetime, Indian train stations also become world class like Grand Central or Amsterdam or Tokyo or Shanghai.
Coming back to the trip (I touched a favorite topic of mine), we went to the Jet Airways check in counter, where Wifey gave the check in agents a piece of her mind and screamed at them for all the issues she faced. Agents were like "Whatever".. We briefly walked around the airport and landed up going to the Jet Lounge. Here we were joined by our Friends and the Friends kids. We had a blast in the lounge as we all filled up on food (not sure if Jet would provide food, going by the experience so far). Late in the middle of the night we boarded our plane, exhausted, kids tried and parents more tired.
Early next morning we landed up Brussels (airport much worse than most Indian airports) and our flight was late. We exited the plane and ran towards our connection (Traveller advise - if you can take direct flights, please do so). Somehow we made our way to the plane and plonked ourselves in our seats. Kids were least bothered as they had access to the TV screen in the flight and were not bothered as long as they were fed and entertained.
Mid Saturday our flight landed up in Newark, a airport which has not been upgraded since the communism fell in the Soviet Union. We cleared immigration along with gazillions of other passengers speaking tens of different languages and then took forever to clear customs as the luggage handling at Newark is not equipped to handle this kind of traffic.
From the airport we went to the rental where we picked up a Ford 350 (called truck).. it was like driving a milk van in India (temp traveller is smaller than this thing). Wifey and Friend were reasonable and we packed the kids in the car seats that had been bought from India (courtesy - Ms. Friend). MapnyIndia GPS was implanted and off we went on our USA road trip to cover the eastern sea board from New York area to Miami in a white bodied white F350 people mover truck.. This would be our home away from home for many days.
We took the good ol Meru cabs to reach the airport and wow what a nice airport. I love India for the fact that for 70 million travelers (annually) all across India, we have spent in excess of $8 billion but for the , 8.9 billion train traveling people we spend nothing and literally each month we have a fatal train accident. Even after this, most upper / rich Indians keep cribbing how bad the airports are..One day, I hope in my lifetime, Indian train stations also become world class like Grand Central or Amsterdam or Tokyo or Shanghai.
Coming back to the trip (I touched a favorite topic of mine), we went to the Jet Airways check in counter, where Wifey gave the check in agents a piece of her mind and screamed at them for all the issues she faced. Agents were like "Whatever".. We briefly walked around the airport and landed up going to the Jet Lounge. Here we were joined by our Friends and the Friends kids. We had a blast in the lounge as we all filled up on food (not sure if Jet would provide food, going by the experience so far). Late in the middle of the night we boarded our plane, exhausted, kids tried and parents more tired.
Early next morning we landed up Brussels (airport much worse than most Indian airports) and our flight was late. We exited the plane and ran towards our connection (Traveller advise - if you can take direct flights, please do so). Somehow we made our way to the plane and plonked ourselves in our seats. Kids were least bothered as they had access to the TV screen in the flight and were not bothered as long as they were fed and entertained.
Mid Saturday our flight landed up in Newark, a airport which has not been upgraded since the communism fell in the Soviet Union. We cleared immigration along with gazillions of other passengers speaking tens of different languages and then took forever to clear customs as the luggage handling at Newark is not equipped to handle this kind of traffic.
From the airport we went to the rental where we picked up a Ford 350 (called truck).. it was like driving a milk van in India (temp traveller is smaller than this thing). Wifey and Friend were reasonable and we packed the kids in the car seats that had been bought from India (courtesy - Ms. Friend). MapnyIndia GPS was implanted and off we went on our USA road trip to cover the eastern sea board from New York area to Miami in a white bodied white F350 people mover truck.. This would be our home away from home for many days.
1 comment:
Very well articulated Shiva
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