My trip to India

We were provided with transportation to get to domestic airport; it was only 5 minutes away. The transportation was a mid size SUV for the driver and 5 passengers. This SUV was better than what we were picked up in; earlier the SUV didn't have a dashboard; it was missing the radio, the temprature controls, etc.

The domestic airport seemed a little better than the international dump we were in for several hours. Jet Airways had a lot of counters; we had several hours so I made sure we would get on the flight. We couldn’t find any place to sit before the security check-in so we sat on a ledge along some plants. I found a STD (long distance) phone booth and made a call, browsed through a few small stores which were no bigger than 10 feet by 10 feet.

I noticed a TATA Indicom booth advertising wifi access. I was curious so I asked the lady about it. She said she didn’t know anything about it and the guy who really knew about it will be back in 10 minutes. I came back in 10 minutes; the guy was busy talking to someone on his mobile phone, it seemed like a personal call. After a few minutes he hung up and explained to me that they have a special promotion that will allow me to use wifi at the airport free for 30 minutes and each additional hour was about $1.25 and the signal was available everywhere in the airport (he pointed to the two ends of the airport; it wasn't a big airport). I took the free card. Right next to their kiosk, the signal strength was poor although I did not loose the connection. I thought that was odd. I checked my email and browsed a few websites and 30 minutes were almost up.

After the security check at we couldn’t find any seats again; there were a lot of people sitting on the floor; my son was sleeping so my wife decided to sit on the floor while she was holding him. I walked around and tried to find an empty seat; there were a bunch of people with luggage on the seats; they didn’t seem to care for woman and children having to stand or sit on the floor. Most Indian airports are not equipped with Jetways; you have to take a bus to the aircraft. When they started to board our plane I found out that we have to go through another security check by Jet Airways. Not sure why they have multiple security checks one right after the other; either Jet Airways doesn’t trust the government security checks since they compete with them or they’re afraid of someone getting in to secured areas by bribing the security guards. We had our luggage scanned and received the wand treatment and we boarded a bus and we were driven to our aircraft which was a small propeller type of plane.

While going up the stairs on the plane; I noticed our luggage being loaded in the back of the plane; it was a small plane and it didn't carry luggage in the belly. There was a guy at the bottom of the stairs who checked our boarding pass; another guy at the top did the same thing. I know there are a lot of people in India and they all need jobs but this was an overkill; there were a few othere guys near the plane watching the luggage being loaded. I didn't care how many people there were as long as I got my seat on the plane.