Okay just to be sure I can say this later: This is a looooong post. It will most likely be the longest one for
the trip as the day of travel has the most info (so far).
After a morning filled with excitement, eventually we got to
the airport to find the other members of the team. All the hellos and goodbyes were so quick
that I almost didn’t notice them taking place.
I think we had a lucky round regarding the time of our flight; the
airport didn’t seem to be too busy on a Tuesday afternoon on a working week. After checking in and getting all the bags
loaded the four of us took a walk through the airport on the “duty free” side
of things… More like the “Pay Some More” side if you ask me. I don’t think anything was cheaper than you
can find it in and around the city of Johannesburg.
So eventually we got onto the plane. I had a pretty good seat, way in the back in
the row where there are only two chairs.
Lucky for me, Lourens had the seat next to me, so I didn’t have to sit
next to someone I didn’t know. The other
2 members of the team were scattered a bit, but the flight was rather empty so
both of them had no one sitting in the seat directly next to them. Take off was awesome, really smooth and also
I think the reality of the travel only set in then. 2 Hours into the flight we started to feel
our seats… for the ‘not so good side’ of them.
Then we discovered something super cool on the plane. You can make inflight calls to other
seats… Yes, yes we did… We called one
another just for the fun of it, crazy I know, but we had fun. By hour 7 the
four of us were standing by Kaishni’s seat and just chilling together (trying
to make the last 2 hours more bearable).
In the time of chatting, I thought about some entertainment by card
tricks… this also only lasts a little while when everyone is more tired than
the average programmer/technical specialist should be.
The moment the plane stopped… I actually think the moment
any plane stops… chaos struck. Everyone
in the entire plane tries to leave at the same time; this doesn’t help much for
the guys in a hurry. Luckily we were
pretty relaxed and just waited out the heard.
When we stepped out of the plane we had the fortunate experience of the
really, really hot temperature (compared to the winter we just left behind in
JHB). But everyone was kind of friendly
and Dubai is an awesome experience in any case.
After 9 hours of flying I don’t think anything can make you feel better
about the way you smell and feel regarding your personal hygiene… That I noticed after changing shirts and
getting some fresh deodorant on. The
airport in Dubai is huge… I think it is about (no exaggeration) the size of the
town I lived in until age 16 (not a big town trust me). We walked and walked and…. You get the
point. Next came the awesome experience
of Burger King:
We were tired and slightly hungry so the idea of anything
eatable sounded like gold, and the idea of having something that you have only
ever seen on TV is even better. But I
really think the food there will never be as good as we all imagined it to be
with our hungry stomachs and tired minds. (only 30 dollars to realize I will
probably never buy it again in my life unless if I should go to the US)
Still in Dubai we were browsing through the prices of
watches, chocolates, toys, books and pretty much everything they had just to
find that South Africa really isn’t such a bad place (price and variety
wise). Then came the wait… waiting at
the gate for your seat group to be called really doesn’t sound like a fun experience,
but we had some fun. For the first time
we could speak Afrikaans with no one, except the four of us, to understand what
you say… It was amazingly funny. We were
saying random things to people, saying random things about people, just kind of
trying to get the time to pass as easily as possible. Then we saw how (really really) stupid people
can be, as they crowded up the entrance to the plane so bad that security had
to close the door. (LoL)
This round on the plane there was a lot more people, so our
entire little team was split up. Luckily
for a short 4 hour flight the company of my iPod was sufficient. For some reason I cannot get my mind to quiet
down and watch a moving on a plane. I
have been waiting just over 2 months to finally see “The hunger games” and it was available on the plane, I actually read
the book also, but the flight together with the movie just didn’t work for me,
so no, I still don’t know if the movie ends exactly the same as the book. (No
spoilers though).
Landing in Mumbai was quite interesting; people at the
airport are not too friendly. Also the
heat knocks you a little bit. When
getting our passports stamped at customs I got asked to fill in the address of
the place we are staying in… Okay so the form we filled in with this
information was filled in on the plane,
all 4 of us filled it in, in the exact same way, just to be sure we have
the same information. Guess who was the
lucky one to be told he doesn’t have enough info regarding the hotel?.. me, and
yes I did mention we all had exactly the same info on our forms… I guess he
just didn’t like the face or the accent, or I just didn’t look tired enough for
their taste.
After getting all
the paper work done we went to pick up our luggage. Kaishni and myself where lucky as our bags
came out quite quickly, but Lourens and Hein got mini heart attacks as their
bags didn’t show even after the bags stopped coming out. Eventually we saw a small pile of bags in
next to the conveyer belt (this was after about 20min of waiting) in this heap
of course we found their bags. Kaishni
and I were super thankful that it was Hein an Lourens, ‘cause we tend to panic
about such things. Also what made it a
little more nerve wrecking was the fact that we weren’t too sure if we were
supposed to move our own bags around in the airport in Dubai (which we now
know, you don’t have to when it is a connecting flight, excuse us we are new to
this).
The drive…
This brings us to the drive from the Airport at Mumbai to
the place where we are staying in Pune.
The two towns/cities are only 150km apart, so that would mean like an
hour’s drive right…. WRONG! Because the
population in Mumbai is so dense the traffic is something of a nightmare. You have like 80 million (yes you read that right) people moving
in different directions, and I seriously think they were all on the road when
we got here (this assumption is made due to the fact that we got here about an
hour before the average working day starts).
It took us FOUR AND A HALF HOURS to drive the spectacular looking
150km. The scenery is really beautiful
because it is now Monsoon season here.
We stopped once for some cold drink, it was a waste of time as we didn’t
yet change our US dollars to Rupies. So
mini-fail there for us, but by the time we got some coke it tasted like heaven
in a bottle.
Hein got a bit sick before we even got food, so he decided
on skipping dinner and sleeping right through.
The rest of us got some pizza (it tastes the same here, just more
expensive than you would imagine pizza in India). Next came a very interesting grocery
shopping… Everything is pretty much the same, but so much different. You can get pretty much anything that you
would get in a South African shop but with some different names and a load of
Rupie conversions in your head. Looking
at the prices sometimes scares the daylights out of me, take something like
coffee which was priced at 550 Rupies.
You just see the 550 at the bottom and paying R550 for coffee would just
be stupid but doing it in Rupies isn’t really so bad once converted (I feel
like I should state at this point that it was a bottle of Nescafe Gold and not
just a cup).
Then it was back to the temporary home again in the
interesting/intense traffic, which would have been followed by our 550 Rupie
coffee… if we had mugs. So this meant a
whole extra process of getting cups.
FUN. Eventually we settled for
the day, after an interesting 2 days of travel.
So thus far India has not been treating us too bad. We haven’t seen any of the famous Monsoon
rains yet, but maybe soon enough.
It was a long read I know (and interesting I hope) but I didn’t mention everything, some things
just need to be heard in person.
Just a little side note, the three of us guys have been
driving Kaishni insane, so if she doesn’t come back in her normal state of
mind… We apologise in advance.
End of day one.
-this
was thought through on many levels including novice and beginner.
