Getting a flight out of Bombay

After everyone leaves for domestic airport; there are about 5 of us left; we hunt down the bald guy who says he is trying to get us on another flight. There is only one guy helping with customer service for the entire Air India staff on Bombay airport. This is India’s biggest airport with government’s flagship airline. They have 1 billion people in the country and a lot of them are unemployed. I see that there are about five employees in baggage claims area just standing around, however it’s not their job to help us. It has been three weeks since Christmas; the baggage claim area still has ugly Christmas decorations up.

At about 7am we are told that they may have a 1pm flight for us. We stand in another line and Jet Airways employees don’t get what we’re saying. We have to go back to the bald guy and have him come with us to explain to Jet Airways what flight we are supposed to be on. We’re issued boarding passes for a 1:10pm flight.

I wanted to go to the domestic airport and just wait there; I’ve been there before and It’s a little better airport. I asked the bald guy about our options and he reluctantly said he can offer us a hotel; I read some reviews like this one where Air India puts you in a roach motel and you’re worse off going into the city filled with people to rip you off. I was extremely reluctant. He said the hotel would be Sahara just across the domestic airport and they would provide transportation. It had been almost 30 hours since we left Chicago and we were tired and I only had about 4 hours of sleep. I could not think straight; I asked him how long to get the hotel shuttle and he said 5 minutes.

He made a call to the hotel and asked them to come right away. We were standing outside of the security in front of the air India desk/cabin. They have this 8 feet by 8 feet poorly lit office; sort of like a toll booth behind a glass enclosure. We stand and wait by this office for about 15 minutes, there is no signs of the shuttle. There are other customers with problems; this one employee is often rude to the customers asking them to step aside or go away. We’re told to go outside “near door 83” and wait for the shuttle. We go outside and there is a sea of people, most of them wearing white; they seem to be waiting for people coming back from middle east. These people were muslims waiting for first flight to come back from Hajj. As we go outside this Indian security personnel asks us where we were going, I said we have to go to Sahara hotel. He thought we meant Sahara airport and asked us to go back inside and catch the shuttle. I explained that we are waiting for a shuttle to the hotel. He let us out of the airport.

We found the “door 83”, it was behind the Air India office on the other side. The door number was about 1 inch high; we could have easily missed it. The weather was really warm. I felt that most people were staring at us. One of the biggest problem was that there were a lot of huge mosquitoes. I got bit several times; I noticed a fan inside the Air India office; I asked if my son can stand inside near the fan so he wouldn’t be bit by mosquitoes. They said he can stand here but the fan doesn’t work. There were even more mosquitoes inside. Around 7:45am, an unmarked SUV arrived; the driver was from Sahara Hotel. We quickly got inside, there were a few other people with us trying to load their luggage. After about 10 minutes we started towards the hotel.

I expected the airport area to be clean with lush trees, may be palm trees. It was anything but that; you can see pretty much entire area was run down and the traffic was pretty bad. One of the first thing I noticed was the air had a lot of dust like there was a dust storm recently.

Bombay International terminal (1A) from outside

The hotel was a couple of miles away; on the way I saw a Hyatt and Sheraton; both looked impressive compared to their surroundings. I was afraid that our hotel was going to be another dump; from the outside it looked okay; the lobby was nice and clean with fresh flowers. There were a couple of people behind the counter. They were slow in checking us in. We took the elevator to the third floor and walked for a minute to our room. More than half of the hotel was under construction. The rooms were okay, similar to a holiday inn in the US.