To India!
And just like that, I’m there… cruising the skies at several hundred miles per hour. I’ve had my last client, I’ve had my last experience of the rat-run and I’ve had my teary goodbyes. All that’s left now is 5 more additional hours to the 2 I’ve already killed till I reach Singapore. I’m being treated to a ride along in a new Airbus A380 along with the ability to plug in my USB memory stick and start word processing, rather than watch some brainless movies (of which I did also!) from the comfort of seat 52C.
***
My short experience of Singapore, incidentally comes exactly 2years after the day I flew out of Chiangi airport to Perth (not to mention 1 year since I made a trip to New Zealand for a visa run). I can see a thoroughly soaked runway through some windows, and an absurd amount of Fuscia bursting from every orifice they seemed to be able to grow a plant from through another. The taxi’s that wait to pick people up from the front look like crash test vehicles in a very plane and dull blue… I’m not regretful I won’t get to look around here further today.
***
Now back to more conventional means of mobile computing, I’m on my second flight from Singapore to Delhi, just shy of 5hours flight time, I’m now being blessed with a short, fat slightly disgusting Indian man sat next to me, who at around every 3 minutes, snorts the excess mucus from the back of his throat and then coughs without holding his mouth. He seems hell bent on getting everything he can from the in-flight menu too, I think I’ve counted 5 requests for peanuts… and they don’t even taste that good!
***
I’m a little sad to be sitting in the middle of the airliner as I miss the descent into Delhi – my foray onto Indian soil, but I get my dose of culture soon enough as I make it out through passport control and into baggage… My snowboard bag is waiting there for me, albeit with several wet boot prints on the top, so just my clothes to come now… What seemed like an hour with the hunger that was starting to build in my belly passed me by and I was finally on my way out to the hoards of taxi pimps awaiting my pickup.
Luckily one of those guys had a clipboard with my name on it, and I was able to kick back and let someone else take care of the rest of the evening.
I made friends with a few other guys here to snowboard, and we all laughed at the crazy Indian highway code “Beep to be seen” code of conduct. From the moment I got out of the plane, the air smelt like something had been burning that shouldn’t have been, like when you see a tire on fire on some derelict land; the atmospheric sky both foggy, smoggy and unclear.
I was soon at the airport hotel and was re-united with my old travel companion Nick, who’d flown in today also; from New Zealand. That’s another country we’ve traveled to together. It’s about 10pm local time when I think about sleep, though my body thinks it’s 3am and so I drift off into slumber as quick as I had anticipated. Sydney catches up with me at 2.30am local time when my body thinks it should be getting up for work, gotta love jet-lag!
***
So now everyone had made it to Delhi, and a day that had lasted 29 hours instead of 24 was behind me, we could all sit down to breakfast to compare travel stories and expectations of what lay ahead of us in Kashmir. The spicy curry breakfast was about as Indian a welcome as you could get.
Back through the crazy Delhi traffic, where vehicles seem to be able to travel whichever way they feel, along any roads and around roundabouts – most junctions and by-ways seem to serve more as an obstacle to most drivers than something that forms order and safety on the roads. We arrived at the airport where we checked in, and even had to go and ID our luggage out on the tarmac before it was loaded onto the airliner. It was also here that we would discover something of a recurring theme in India; the power cut. The domestic terminal plunged into darkness a couple of times, though the public don’t really panic… it’s just normality here.
We landed in Srinegar, Kashmir amidst a much cleaner air than we had so far been used to in India. As we walked across the tarmac to the terminal building, armed soldiers were periodically posted to check all was in order. The conflict between India and Pakistan that has continued since the earlier stages of the last century, still casting doubts over the future of Kashmir.
Out in the near-zero temperatures with our bags, we walked out of the airport along a muddy lane lined with barb-wire fences, I felt more like a Prisoner Of War than a tourist; the locals equally interested in us and our long board bags as we were them, and there traditional winter attire.
Once our gear was loaded onto the car roofs, our drivers sped off along the rubble streets and then onto tarmac. Many shanty style houses were there, though strangely, much like the new terminal building being erected, extremely modern blue reflective glass buildings popped up; that wouldn’t look out of place in Dubai or any major modern city.
Some brief flashes of snow covered peaks, and the weather was cooling rapidly – as we arrived at what seemed to be the last town before the bendy roads that would lead us to our home for the next fortnight. Local men mulled around our cars for no particular reason, it was quite unlike any other snow resort I’d ever approached before.
As we started up the final roads to Gulmarg, the snow was falling hard and the roads became more treacherous. Our driver seemed a little too naïve for my liking, and didn’t seem to realize that a vehicle has more traction the more gear notches you go. As a result we got stuck, many, many times. The other half of our group would arrive at the hotel a whole hour earlier than we did and for all my efforts, I just couldn’t educate the driver. He finally saw some sense and got the snow chains out, except in true Kashmiri style, there was only one – which meant the back end of our car was constantly fighting ahead of the other side of the car.
Regardless we were happy to finally get to the snow covered hotel in Gulmarg, still with snow landing heavily around us.
Back through the crazy Delhi traffic, where vehicles seem to be able to travel whichever way they feel, along any roads and around roundabouts – most junctions and by-ways seem to serve more as an obstacle to most drivers than something that forms order and safety on the roads. We arrived at the airport where we checked in, and even had to go and ID our luggage out on the tarmac before it was loaded onto the airliner. It was also here that we would discover something of a recurring theme in India; the power cut. The domestic terminal plunged into darkness a couple of times, though the public don’t really panic… it’s just normality here.
We landed in Srinegar, Kashmir amidst a much cleaner air than we had so far been used to in India. As we walked across the tarmac to the terminal building, armed soldiers were periodically posted to check all was in order. The conflict between India and Pakistan that has continued since the earlier stages of the last century, still casting doubts over the future of Kashmir.Out in the near-zero temperatures with our bags, we walked out of the airport along a muddy lane lined with barb-wire fences, I felt more like a Prisoner Of War than a tourist; the locals equally interested in us and our long board bags as we were them, and there traditional winter attire.
Once our gear was loaded onto the car roofs, our drivers sped off along the rubble streets and then onto tarmac. Many shanty style houses were there, though strangely, much like the new terminal building being erected, extremely modern blue reflective glass buildings popped up; that wouldn’t look out of place in Dubai or any major modern city.
Some brief flashes of snow covered peaks, and the weather was cooling rapidly – as we arrived at what seemed to be the last town before the bendy roads that would lead us to our home for the next fortnight. Local men mulled around our cars for no particular reason, it was quite unlike any other snow resort I’d ever approached before.
As we started up the final roads to Gulmarg, the snow was falling hard and the roads became more treacherous. Our driver seemed a little too naïve for my liking, and didn’t seem to realize that a vehicle has more traction the more gear notches you go. As a result we got stuck, many, many times. The other half of our group would arrive at the hotel a whole hour earlier than we did and for all my efforts, I just couldn’t educate the driver. He finally saw some sense and got the snow chains out, except in true Kashmiri style, there was only one – which meant the back end of our car was constantly fighting ahead of the other side of the car.Regardless we were happy to finally get to the snow covered hotel in Gulmarg, still with snow landing heavily around us.
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