Cake, you surround me. Black forest, pineapple gateaux, chocolate bomb. You come in so many colors and shapes and sizes, each of you more delectable than the one just before.
Tempting, moist, delicious sweet cake – you are everywhere. You’re on every coffee shop counter and movie theatre snack bar. Chocolate mousse, chocolate fantasy, chocolate doughnut – you’re not technically cake but you’re eaten with a spoon.
Meals are healthy. But cake, you balance it out. Thick and heavy, weighed down with icing. How do so many stay so thin when you show your sweet self?
Falooda, jalebi, gulab jamun – they’re all very tasty. But cake, you have the numbers. Cake, you have the reach. Cake, you dominate. And you taste good.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
and now, the scramble
I’ve reached the counting down point, but I have many different dates to count down to. I roughly have:
2 weeks left working in Bangalore
4 weeks left in India
5 weeks till I’m back in balmy L.A.
And of course, because I always put too much pressure on myself to be productive with my time, I have a lot of stuff to do. And only two weeks to do it. Namely, I have to edit my final India short film (I’ll also be doing something with all the urban monkey footage I’ve shot, but that will come post-balmy L.A. return). And I want it to be totally finished and online before I leave Bangalore. Self-imposed deadline. And I also have some writing I need to finish.
I spent all weekend shooting b-roll of interesting Bangalore stuff, including my interactions with it (like talking with cows). And I still have to shoot some indoor bits as well. And cut it all together. This will likely be the longest and most complex of my adequately named “Bangaloring” series. So of course I cannot spend my last few weeks relaxing. I’ve got work to do. Blechh.
I always guilt myself into being productive when all I really want to do is relax and watch TV and eat ice cream. Stupid self-guilt.
2 weeks left working in Bangalore
4 weeks left in India
5 weeks till I’m back in balmy L.A.
And of course, because I always put too much pressure on myself to be productive with my time, I have a lot of stuff to do. And only two weeks to do it. Namely, I have to edit my final India short film (I’ll also be doing something with all the urban monkey footage I’ve shot, but that will come post-balmy L.A. return). And I want it to be totally finished and online before I leave Bangalore. Self-imposed deadline. And I also have some writing I need to finish.
I spent all weekend shooting b-roll of interesting Bangalore stuff, including my interactions with it (like talking with cows). And I still have to shoot some indoor bits as well. And cut it all together. This will likely be the longest and most complex of my adequately named “Bangaloring” series. So of course I cannot spend my last few weeks relaxing. I’ve got work to do. Blechh.
I always guilt myself into being productive when all I really want to do is relax and watch TV and eat ice cream. Stupid self-guilt.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Sweatin' Mumbai
Last week was Good Friday, a holiday on the Indian calendar. Rather than wile away my day off on the streets of Bangalore, playing with wild dogs and dodging gaping holes in the sidewalk, I decided to fly to Mumbai. Bollywood.
Formerly known as Bombay (a way cooler name), Mumbai is home to the biggest film industry in the world, bigger even than Hollywood. Even after the city’s name change, the Bollywood nickname stuck. “Mullywood” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
It would be awesome to see filmmaking from the Indian perspective. I’d imagine it would be much like American filmmaking, but with a lot more Indian people. And big, over-the-top song and dance numbers – many taking place on hillsides and adjacent to water – where rhythm and movements symbolize a couple’s passion in a morally acceptable way.
Sadly, you can’t visit the Bollywood studios – they’re closed to the public. So I couldn’t witness firsthand a director telling his lead actress that her performance is “too realistic.” That she needs to heighten every expression, every gesture. To make it bigger, less subtle, more artificial. To make it more Bollywood.
I’d heard that occasionally a Bollywood production will pluck random tourists to be extras in a film. I’d be down with that. It would be neat to compare the experience with that glamorous period of my life when I worked as an extra, making background crosses like no other.
But that didn’t happen. I was never discovered by Central Casting: Mumbai.
When you want to drink a beer in India, chances are that it’s a Kingfisher beer. And when you want to fly on a really nice plane in India, you fly Kingfisher Airlines, which is what I did. For an hour and a half flight, I get a nice meal with dessert, a personal video screen on the seat in front of me (of course nothing good is on save for a claymation penguin show called Pingu), a little goody bag – even this weird spicy buttermilk drink in a juice box. It’s actually pretty nasty, but at least it’s free.
I arrive in Mumbai and step outside. It’s mid-afternoon and it’s hot. Very hot. Too-close-to-the-sun hot. I can’t find a “cool cab” (cab with air conditioning) so I take a regular one for the long ride to my hotel in the Fort district. The open cab windows create wind on my face as sweat dampens the back of my shirt.
The ride takes a while as we pass through neighborhood after neighborhood of slums. Homes made out of random pieces of wood and sheet metal and old plastic tarps. Ladders leading up to second story hovels. Children playing, some of them naked, some of them bored. Adults chatting or sleeping on the ground, on cots, on boxes, whatever. With the stifling heat, a nap is not such a bad idea.
I get to my hotel, The Residency, My room is small but it has an air conditioner. So I crank it up and sit motionless in front of it for a while. It’s lovely.
Finally I roust myself from my icy bliss. I should go outside and do something – but what? I need an objective. Looking through my assorted guides and maps, I see a movie theatre is nearby. Yes, I’ll see a Hindi movie. A Bollywood movie in Bollywood. I am pleased with myself for this brilliant plan.
The movie doesn’t start for a few hours so I go outside and wander aimlessly. I like to do that in strange cities. Pick up the atmosphere, the vibe. And Mumbai has a great vibe, a robust energy you can really feel.
I walk on the sidewalk, alternately ignoring and rejecting the countless vendors hawking bootleg DVDs, underwear, and what appear to be vibrators (seriously, a bunch of vendors are selling them and they don’t look like anything else). It seems every vendor makes an extra effort to grab my attention. They must know I’m from out of town – but how? Is it because I’m one of the few people wearing sunglasses? My nice sneakers? Or perhaps my blonde hair and milky white skin gives me away. Hmmm…
I have a nice dinner at a veg restaurant called Samrat. The soup and main course are fine, but the starter (appetizer) is the bomb. Twelve baby corns, deep fried. Mmmmm…deep fried baby corns…
Done with my herbavorian feast, I mosey over to the Eros Cinema with my ticket for the just-opened, destined-to-be-a-classic Shaka Laka Boom Boom. Some flick about the cutthroat music industry. I sit up in the balcony, the movie starts and twenty minutes later I fall asleep. This is not uncommon for me. In the states, I would often have a few dozing moments before snapping back awake for the rest of the flick. But today I sleep for most of the first half, right up until intermission. Which is fine. I manage to stay awake for the second half and wish I were still sleeping. Major overacting (which is obvious despite it not being in English), way overdramatic music – even the dancing is lame. A poor cinematic experience. Perhaps my expectations were too high for a film called Shaka Laka Boom Boom.
Saturday, I go to the Gateway of India. It’s pretty much as I expected – a large gray structure that doesn’t do anything and you can’t go inside, like the Arc de Triumphe in Paris or that big arch in Washington Square Park in NY. You see it, say “wow, that’s big,” you take a few pictures. And five minutes later, you’re done. At least from here, I can take a boat ride. Which is good, because the boats go to Elephanta Island, which is where I want to go.
The boat ride is hot. Thank goodness for the partial canopy or I’d completely wilt. After an hour, my fellow tourists and I arrive at the end of a long dock leading to Elephanta Island. I walk alongside a toy train that transports the kids and the lazy. My pace is only slightly slower than that of the train. I grab a bottle of water and snack on homemade nut brittle and some slices of mystery fruit (at first I think it’s an apple, turns out not to be) I bought from one of the many peddlers sitting on the ground.
Traditional women pose with objects on their heads, imploring you to take a picture (and give them money). I take a shot of the first one I pass as she mugs from the camera. I give her ten rupees and she says “twenty.” I continue walking. (Later I delete the picture. It feels too artificial, too inorganic)
I reach the base of a lengthy stone incline, a gauntlet of peddlers on both sides as far up as I can see. But at least these folk sell interesting souvenirs – carvings and bells and Ganesha figurines. And not a single vibrator. I pace myself as I climb the many steps, not wanting a repeat of my last sweltering staircase shlep, when I puked from walking too fast.
Reaching the top of the steps, I am sweating profusely. I taste it as it trickles into my mouth. It tastes like sweat.
I explore the wide open caves, or at least the one that’s open to visitors. Thousand year old columns and sculptures of Hindu gods. Same gods I’ve seen at many temples, but this time it’s in a cave. Which makes it cooler. Figuratively and literally. Gotta love caves.
I return to the mainland and look for snake charmers around the Gateway of India, for I’d heard they sometimes gather there. Unfortunately, I find none. Though I do see some teenagers diving boldly into the water and I grab some nice action shots.
My sweat almost makes me miss my dinner reservation. I knew it had seriously dampened my watchband, but I didn’t realize it had diffused into the timepiece itself, causing it to slow down time. So when I think it’s five o’clock, it turns out to really be six. Lousy sweaty watch.
I have an excellent dinner at the super fancy schmancy Taj Mahal Hotel. The restaurant is Wasabi, created by Masaharu Morimoto, one of the Iron Chefs. I hadn’t had real sushi since coming to India and this makes up for it. It’s ever so tasty and the presentation is superb. And it doesn’t hurt that the waiter keeps bringing me free sake.
On the hot walk back to the hotel, my shirt returns to its nearly liquid state. All I want to do is take a shower. But of course the hotel bathroom doesn’t have a traditional (Western) shower, it only has a curtain to divide the room and a random shower head sticking out of the wall. It also has, like most Indian bathrooms, a bucket and a cup with which you can pour water on yourself to “bathe.” I opt try my luck with the random shower head.
The water isn’t even lukewarm but it feels great. So nice for the liquid covering my body to be water instead of sweat. The water ends up leaking out of the bathroom and into the main room so I spend the next ten minutes sopping it up with a towel. I know I could just ask some hotel guy to do it, but I’m tired and don’t want any people coming in for floor mopping duty. I just want to relax.
On Sunday, my final day in town, I hit some art galleries and museums. There are some nice works of art. And air conditioning. Did I mention I like air conditioning?
With my return flight time fast approaching, I walk south toward the water, to Colaba Market. It’s a bustling marketplace with vendors selling fruit, veggies and the like. As I walk deeper into the market, the path becomes narrower. There are more people going about their daily routine, not just exchanging goods. Goats wander freely. Children play. And then it dawns on me that I’m right in the middle of a slum.
I continue walking, hoping the maze-like path will eventually lead out of the endless sea of shanties. But it doesn’t. I end up on a beach covered with more garbage than sand, a wall of shacks on one side, Back Bay on the other. The place is teeming with life. A man washes a cow in the water while children happily dive from the top of well-worn fishing boats. An oddly beautiful scene, in its own sad, colorful way.
I take some (what I hope to be) surreptitious pictures and continue my exploration, still looking for the way out. I never feel unsafe, but I am clearly an outsider here, despite the friendly waves of the toddlers who say hello to me as I pass.
Hitting a dead end, I turn around and go back the way I came, stumbling upon another out-of-place white guy. He looks more lost than me. He says he’s from Denmark, in month nine of a ten month trip around the world. Now he’s trying to reach the Gateway of India. We retrace my original steps, back out of the slum, through the market and back to middle class Mumbai. We go our separate ways, he to the stationary landmark, me back to the hotel to pick up my bag.
Before my cab ride back to the airport, all I want is a cold drink. Unfortunately it’s Easter, so almost nothing is open, at least among the small shops and fruit stands by The Residency. Just when I’m about to give up, I find an open juice stand and order a glass of pineapple juice for ten rupees. The juiceman takes a few pieces of pineapple, slices the ends off with a knife and puts them in a blender. He blends for a long time, long enough for me to repeatedly wave off the troop of mosquitoes flying about. Finally he pours my glass. It’s not cold, but it’s tall and frothy, more foam than juice. Kinda like an Orange Julius, only completely natural. And man, is it good.
And with that, I finish my glass. And my weekend in Mumbai.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
slip
An hour ago, I almost cracked my head open. Yes, by accident.
I turned off the shower and started to walk out when I slipped, my feet flying up behind me. My face headed straight for the hard tile floor at an alarming speed. In the split second before collision, I managed to brace myself slightly, extending my forearm out just enough to take some of the impact. Thankfully.
My arm slammed into the floor, as did the side of my chin and, somehow, my ankle. As I lay there on the cold wet tile, surrounded by the little beard hairs I had shaved off pre-shower, I took inventory. My much-knocked-out (and now totally fake) front tooth was still intact. My chin was sore but still all together. And the only trace of spilt blood was congealing gently around the nail of my right big toe.
In five seconds I went from a fine mood to sudden terror to great relief. Because this is no place to get yourself injured. Another American had told me how his friend had dislocated his shoulder here, and about the bloodstains he saw on the hospital wall. And I knew that if you had major tooth problems, the most common fix would be pulling the tooth, often by dentists who do it out on the street.
As I stood back up, I took a deep, contemplative breath, very thankful that I barely avoided serious injury, that I braced my fall just enough. Because this is not a place to get hurt.
I turned off the shower and started to walk out when I slipped, my feet flying up behind me. My face headed straight for the hard tile floor at an alarming speed. In the split second before collision, I managed to brace myself slightly, extending my forearm out just enough to take some of the impact. Thankfully.
My arm slammed into the floor, as did the side of my chin and, somehow, my ankle. As I lay there on the cold wet tile, surrounded by the little beard hairs I had shaved off pre-shower, I took inventory. My much-knocked-out (and now totally fake) front tooth was still intact. My chin was sore but still all together. And the only trace of spilt blood was congealing gently around the nail of my right big toe.
In five seconds I went from a fine mood to sudden terror to great relief. Because this is no place to get yourself injured. Another American had told me how his friend had dislocated his shoulder here, and about the bloodstains he saw on the hospital wall. And I knew that if you had major tooth problems, the most common fix would be pulling the tooth, often by dentists who do it out on the street.
As I stood back up, I took a deep, contemplative breath, very thankful that I barely avoided serious injury, that I braced my fall just enough. Because this is not a place to get hurt.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Service
The service industry is huge out here. If there’s some simple task you need to do, you can bet there will be four Indian men with neatly trimmed mustaches ready to do it for you. Need to open a door? They’ll take care of it. Need someone to guard an ATM? They’ve got it covered. Want to buy a shirt? Rest assured, a handful of workers will make sure you see every one available…even if the first one was fine.
It’s nice when people do things for you, especially if that’s their job. But with each task someone is assigned to, that’s one less thing you can do yourself. And I’d rather do things myself. I have no problem picking out a shirt or opening a door.
Don’t get me wrong – there are some aspects that I like. I live at the Melange, a serviced apartment (like a hotel) where they wash and fold my laundry. And wash my dishes every day. And clean my studio apartment and make my bed (too tightly). But I don’t need them to do all this. I would not die if I came home to a messy room. My world would not crumble if a dirty dish was left in the sink.
Unlike back in the states, I don’t enjoy many of those wonderful do-nothing, never-leave-the-house days. I feel I should be out as much as possible since I have no idea when/if I’ll ever be back again. But there have been a few days where I just wanted to just veg out, to only move the distance between the bed and the refrigerator (and later, the bed and the bathroom). As I do every time I’m in the apartment, I’ll leave the “do not disturb” sign on the doorknob. In the early afternoon, I’ll get a phone call from the cleaning staff. “Good afternoon, sir. What time would you like us to clean the room, sir?” A few time I’ve said that it’s fine, I don’t need the room cleaned that day. In the worker’s response, I can hear the faintest hint of sadness in his voice, of disappointment in his tone. And I feel guilty.
And what happens when a service employee isn’t doing his job? Most nice stores have a doorman to open the door for you. And I want to let him do it – it’s what he’s paid for. But sometimes the doorman isn’t paying attention. Do I wait a moment for him to notice me, then let me in? Do I open the door halfway, hoping the movement is spotted by his peripheral vision so that he’ll open it the rest of the way? Do I just open the door myself and go in, possibly making him feel he’s not doing his job properly? Too many options – and all I want is to go inside.
I’ve accepted having a driver, even if I’ve never gotten totally comfortable with it. It is nice not having to deal with the challenging driving conditions out here – countless motorcycles, insane drivers jockeying for position, occasional slowdowns caused by random cows wandering into the street. And being in the backseat, I can write and stay productive with my time.
But I feel embarrassed when (about a third of the time), Thankachen will see me approach the car and he’ll run around it, rushing to open the door for me. Especially when he does it in public. I’m not someone special, I need no such special treatment.
I also miss the control of being able to drive myself places. Of not having to arrange transportation ahead of time. If I want to go somewhere on the weekend, it’s polite to give Thankachen some advance notice, so he can plan his own schedule accordingly. But I don’t always plan my weekends. I’d rather just do what I feel like it, go where the day takes me (to speak in clichés).
That’s why I walk as much as possible. With walking, I don’t have to rely on anyone but myself and my feet and my comfortable shoes. It’s independent. Nobody is leading me anywhere, I can go any direction I want and I don’t have to stop if I don’t want to. I just hope that wherever I end up, the doorman is paying attention when I walk to the door.
It’s nice when people do things for you, especially if that’s their job. But with each task someone is assigned to, that’s one less thing you can do yourself. And I’d rather do things myself. I have no problem picking out a shirt or opening a door.
Don’t get me wrong – there are some aspects that I like. I live at the Melange, a serviced apartment (like a hotel) where they wash and fold my laundry. And wash my dishes every day. And clean my studio apartment and make my bed (too tightly). But I don’t need them to do all this. I would not die if I came home to a messy room. My world would not crumble if a dirty dish was left in the sink.
Unlike back in the states, I don’t enjoy many of those wonderful do-nothing, never-leave-the-house days. I feel I should be out as much as possible since I have no idea when/if I’ll ever be back again. But there have been a few days where I just wanted to just veg out, to only move the distance between the bed and the refrigerator (and later, the bed and the bathroom). As I do every time I’m in the apartment, I’ll leave the “do not disturb” sign on the doorknob. In the early afternoon, I’ll get a phone call from the cleaning staff. “Good afternoon, sir. What time would you like us to clean the room, sir?” A few time I’ve said that it’s fine, I don’t need the room cleaned that day. In the worker’s response, I can hear the faintest hint of sadness in his voice, of disappointment in his tone. And I feel guilty.
And what happens when a service employee isn’t doing his job? Most nice stores have a doorman to open the door for you. And I want to let him do it – it’s what he’s paid for. But sometimes the doorman isn’t paying attention. Do I wait a moment for him to notice me, then let me in? Do I open the door halfway, hoping the movement is spotted by his peripheral vision so that he’ll open it the rest of the way? Do I just open the door myself and go in, possibly making him feel he’s not doing his job properly? Too many options – and all I want is to go inside.
I’ve accepted having a driver, even if I’ve never gotten totally comfortable with it. It is nice not having to deal with the challenging driving conditions out here – countless motorcycles, insane drivers jockeying for position, occasional slowdowns caused by random cows wandering into the street. And being in the backseat, I can write and stay productive with my time.
But I feel embarrassed when (about a third of the time), Thankachen will see me approach the car and he’ll run around it, rushing to open the door for me. Especially when he does it in public. I’m not someone special, I need no such special treatment.
I also miss the control of being able to drive myself places. Of not having to arrange transportation ahead of time. If I want to go somewhere on the weekend, it’s polite to give Thankachen some advance notice, so he can plan his own schedule accordingly. But I don’t always plan my weekends. I’d rather just do what I feel like it, go where the day takes me (to speak in clichés).
That’s why I walk as much as possible. With walking, I don’t have to rely on anyone but myself and my feet and my comfortable shoes. It’s independent. Nobody is leading me anywhere, I can go any direction I want and I don’t have to stop if I don’t want to. I just hope that wherever I end up, the doorman is paying attention when I walk to the door.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Friday, March 16, 2007
travel troubles
I hate planning ahead, really hate it. It’s a pain personally and it can stifle spontaneity. When I did my London semester back in the day, I bought a Eurorail pass. During my vacation time, I took trains all around, stopping at whatever random country I felt like stopping at. I fully embraced the concept of winging it.
Sadly, I do not have the luxury of winging it here. At least not in regard to my long vacation, the one coming at the end of my time here, the one I’ve been looking forward to since Bangalore day 1. The way I set it up, I’ll finish working in early May, then I’ll have two weeks off to gallivant around the country. Jeremy’s Farewell India Tour 2007 ©. Since the infrastructure here is not quite as stellar as in Europe, and since the trains don’t have as much zip, I’ll have to fly from place to place. And when you have to fly, you really can’t wing it, so to speak.
There are three main places I want to travel to: Mumbai (Bombay), Nepal and the Andaman Islands. I never heard of the Andaman Islands until a few months ago (at least I don’t think I’d heard of them – sometimes my memory plays revisionist history tricks on me), when I stumbled upon a website called barefootindia.com. Now I really want to go. The islands are a couple hours east of mainland India, close to Thailand. They look very beautiful, and apparently are still in their not-yet-swamped-by-tourists-with-fanny-packs phase.
One of the big things to do there is scuba dive – and from the pictures I saw, it looks like an amazing experience. An underwater world filled with exotic looking creatures, interesting reefs and, umm, water. I’ve never scuba dived before (except briefly in a five foot tank outside a scuba shop in Albuquerque when I was twelve) but somehow the idea of doing so has permeated my brain. Now I have to scuba dive. It must be done.
Monsoon season rolls in around mid-May, scuttling opportunities to scuba. So I decide to make the Andaman Islands my first destination. Hopefully I can beat the monsoons.
But getting to the Andamans seems no easy task. I have been trying to book airline tickets for the past week, with varying degrees of dismal failure. It’s not unexpected. I mean, it’s not like I’m trying to fly from L.A. to Vegas -- I’m trying to reach some obscure little chain of islands in the Indian Ocean.
There’s no direct flight from Bangalore to the Andaman Islands – there are only flights to/from Chennai and Calcutta. So one of those cities will have to be my stopover, my “via.”
The “name” travel sites, shockingly, do not offer any flights to Port Blair, the Andaman Islands town with an airport (which, for reasons unknown to me, has the airport code IXZ.). One of the main sketchy Indian travel sites, india.makemytrip.com (which I used to fly to Delhi in December), has an Indian Airlines flight that goes out there, but it leaves Chennai really early in the morning, making a same-day connection from Bangalore impossible.
So I continue searching online, visiting all the local airline sites. Some of the sites work well, most work poorly. I learn the only airlines that fly to Port Blair are Jet Airways, Air Deccan and Indian Airlines. Jet only has hella expensive business class seats. Indian Airlines doesn’t have a workable connecting flight. That leaves Air Deccan, which actually has a terrific fare listed on its website. And as a plus, unlike many of the domestic airlines in India, Air Deccan has the same prices for foreigners as for Indian nationals. Sweet!
I go to the Air Deccan website, select my itinerary, put in my credit card information and click to purchase. It doesn’t work. There’s an error message. But of course it doesn’t tell me what specifically the error is, only that there is an error. Very helpful. I double-check all my info, re-enter my credit card number and (hoping I don’t somehow get charged twice), click the purchase button again. No dice.
So I find the, roughly, eight different phone numbers listed on the site. I should mention that making a phone call out here is a baffling ordeal, at least for me. You can’t always call the same number from a landline and from a cell. There are various codes to dial before the “main” part of the number, depending on a myriad of factors that I don’t remotely understand. They even incorporate the “+” sign, but only sometimes. How I long for the subtle simplicity of the three digit area code…
Anyway… after trying countless digit combinations, I finally reach Air Deccan. I wait on hold for ten minutes, enjoying the latest Bollywood tunes. Then a real person picks up and I tell her my purchasing problem. She explains that I couldn’t buy the ticket on their website because my credit card wasn’t issued in India. Makes sense, though it would’ve been nice if the website could have told me that. I ask if I can purchase tickets over the phone. She says I can’t. She says I can only purchase tickets at one of their two Bangalore offices, paying with cash. She directs me to the one at the airport. Yes! I get to go to the airport on a day I’m not even flying anywhere! Hurray!
After work, with wads of paper money weighing down my pockets, I go to the airport. I wait in a very short yet very slow line at the Air Deccan counter, distracting myself with the “Bounce” game on my cell phone while staving off wannabe line jumpers by blocking them with my elbows. Everyone in front of me is frustrated, arguing with the clerk. I don’t care what they’re arguing about. I just want to get to the front of the line so I can buy my ticket and go home. I’m tired, I’ve been working all day.
Finally I reach the clerk and he tells me they don’t accept cash. I’m taken aback. “But they told me on the phone that I could pay cash here.” The clerk gives no reaction. “Well can I use my credit card?” No. “Can I write a check?” No. “Well then what do you actually do here if you can’t sell me a ticket?” The clerk just smiles dumbly, seemingly amused by the reaction to his own powerlessness. Now I can see why all the people in front of me had been arguing with the guy.
The next day, also after work, I go to the other Bangalore Air Deccan office. The place looks fairly legitimate. And there’s a cool electronic map of India that shows the status of all current Air Deccan flights. I manage to get to a ticket agent in short time. I show her the flights I want, the same ones with the great price I’d found on the website. Strangely (?), those tickets now cost twice as much. Hmmm… I’m annoyed, but I just want to get the tickets and be done with it. And the price is still way better than the Jet Airways business class tickets. Unfortunately I don’t have enough cash in my pocket. I’m a few thousand rupees short. The ticket agent says I can use the ATM across the street. I ask if she can hold that reservation for me since I’ll be right back. She says she can’t.
I come back ten minutes later, my pockets even more overloaded with cash, courtesy of the fine ATM at ICICI bank. I go back to the same ticket agent. She looks at the computer screen again and – what do you know? – one of my flights now costs 8000 rupees more than it did just ten minutes earlier. That’s nearly $200. So I’m pissed. I thank her for nothing and walk out.
On the drive to the Air Deccan office, I had noticed a small travel agency. So now, not wanting to end another day ticket-less, I walk inside. It’s 5:45pm. The woman behind the counter is exceedingly friendly, which is refreshing. She says they can’t hold reservations, I would just have to buy the tickets outright. Sounds perfect to me.
Weighing all my options, I realize that unless I want to spend a buttload of money, I’ll have to fly into Chennai on one day, and then fly to the Andaman Islands the next. It’s not ideal, but whatever.
The woman behind the counter and I discuss flight options, itineraries and such. We find the flights that best suit my needs. I’m ready to buy the tickets. But she says that I can’t. “But I thought you said I HAD to buy them, that you couldn’t hold reservations?” She says that after six, they stop selling tickets. It’s 6:15 when she tells me this.
So that evening, I go back home, determined to book those Indian Airlines tickets myself at india.makemytrip.com. And of course my payment doesn’t go through. At least the website was kind enough to say it was because of my lovely non-Indian credit card. But then, I figured that out already.
Now it’s today. I call the makemytrip office from work. The young makemytrip man I speak with, Shashank, is very helpful. He sets me up with the flights I want at a reasonable price. He’ll even keep the tickets on hold for 24 hours while he waits for me to fax over some form and a copy of my credit card, front and back. I’m not so keen on the idea of faxing copies of my credit card, but my options are limited. And I had to do something similar (with much trepidation) when I used makemytrip for my December Delhi flights, and that worked out okay.
So I get my papers together and am ready to fax. But where’s a fax machine? I work at the massive Infosys campus, Electronics City. The center of a tech hub in a tech city. It should be easy to find a fax machine, right? Right??
My friend/boss Eshwari knows of only one fax machine on campus (I’m sure there are more hiding). We take the long walk to another building, where two guys attempt, repeatedly, to send out the fax. Doesn’t happen. The machine just won’t send it.
Fine, I say, I’ll just have the concierge at my service apartment send it. He tries to fax and he also fails. Repeatedly. And I’m pretty sure the number I was sending to wasn’t the problem.
So I give a call to good ol’ Shashank at makemytrip. He says I can just email him the forms and the copies of the credit card. Thank goodness. I email him all the needed stuff and the ticket is purchased. At least I think it’s purchased. I know my credit card was charged...
Sadly, I do not have the luxury of winging it here. At least not in regard to my long vacation, the one coming at the end of my time here, the one I’ve been looking forward to since Bangalore day 1. The way I set it up, I’ll finish working in early May, then I’ll have two weeks off to gallivant around the country. Jeremy’s Farewell India Tour 2007 ©. Since the infrastructure here is not quite as stellar as in Europe, and since the trains don’t have as much zip, I’ll have to fly from place to place. And when you have to fly, you really can’t wing it, so to speak.
There are three main places I want to travel to: Mumbai (Bombay), Nepal and the Andaman Islands. I never heard of the Andaman Islands until a few months ago (at least I don’t think I’d heard of them – sometimes my memory plays revisionist history tricks on me), when I stumbled upon a website called barefootindia.com. Now I really want to go. The islands are a couple hours east of mainland India, close to Thailand. They look very beautiful, and apparently are still in their not-yet-swamped-by-tourists-with-fanny-packs phase.
One of the big things to do there is scuba dive – and from the pictures I saw, it looks like an amazing experience. An underwater world filled with exotic looking creatures, interesting reefs and, umm, water. I’ve never scuba dived before (except briefly in a five foot tank outside a scuba shop in Albuquerque when I was twelve) but somehow the idea of doing so has permeated my brain. Now I have to scuba dive. It must be done.
Monsoon season rolls in around mid-May, scuttling opportunities to scuba. So I decide to make the Andaman Islands my first destination. Hopefully I can beat the monsoons.
But getting to the Andamans seems no easy task. I have been trying to book airline tickets for the past week, with varying degrees of dismal failure. It’s not unexpected. I mean, it’s not like I’m trying to fly from L.A. to Vegas -- I’m trying to reach some obscure little chain of islands in the Indian Ocean.
There’s no direct flight from Bangalore to the Andaman Islands – there are only flights to/from Chennai and Calcutta. So one of those cities will have to be my stopover, my “via.”
The “name” travel sites, shockingly, do not offer any flights to Port Blair, the Andaman Islands town with an airport (which, for reasons unknown to me, has the airport code IXZ.). One of the main sketchy Indian travel sites, india.makemytrip.com (which I used to fly to Delhi in December), has an Indian Airlines flight that goes out there, but it leaves Chennai really early in the morning, making a same-day connection from Bangalore impossible.
So I continue searching online, visiting all the local airline sites. Some of the sites work well, most work poorly. I learn the only airlines that fly to Port Blair are Jet Airways, Air Deccan and Indian Airlines. Jet only has hella expensive business class seats. Indian Airlines doesn’t have a workable connecting flight. That leaves Air Deccan, which actually has a terrific fare listed on its website. And as a plus, unlike many of the domestic airlines in India, Air Deccan has the same prices for foreigners as for Indian nationals. Sweet!
I go to the Air Deccan website, select my itinerary, put in my credit card information and click to purchase. It doesn’t work. There’s an error message. But of course it doesn’t tell me what specifically the error is, only that there is an error. Very helpful. I double-check all my info, re-enter my credit card number and (hoping I don’t somehow get charged twice), click the purchase button again. No dice.
So I find the, roughly, eight different phone numbers listed on the site. I should mention that making a phone call out here is a baffling ordeal, at least for me. You can’t always call the same number from a landline and from a cell. There are various codes to dial before the “main” part of the number, depending on a myriad of factors that I don’t remotely understand. They even incorporate the “+” sign, but only sometimes. How I long for the subtle simplicity of the three digit area code…
Anyway… after trying countless digit combinations, I finally reach Air Deccan. I wait on hold for ten minutes, enjoying the latest Bollywood tunes. Then a real person picks up and I tell her my purchasing problem. She explains that I couldn’t buy the ticket on their website because my credit card wasn’t issued in India. Makes sense, though it would’ve been nice if the website could have told me that. I ask if I can purchase tickets over the phone. She says I can’t. She says I can only purchase tickets at one of their two Bangalore offices, paying with cash. She directs me to the one at the airport. Yes! I get to go to the airport on a day I’m not even flying anywhere! Hurray!
After work, with wads of paper money weighing down my pockets, I go to the airport. I wait in a very short yet very slow line at the Air Deccan counter, distracting myself with the “Bounce” game on my cell phone while staving off wannabe line jumpers by blocking them with my elbows. Everyone in front of me is frustrated, arguing with the clerk. I don’t care what they’re arguing about. I just want to get to the front of the line so I can buy my ticket and go home. I’m tired, I’ve been working all day.
Finally I reach the clerk and he tells me they don’t accept cash. I’m taken aback. “But they told me on the phone that I could pay cash here.” The clerk gives no reaction. “Well can I use my credit card?” No. “Can I write a check?” No. “Well then what do you actually do here if you can’t sell me a ticket?” The clerk just smiles dumbly, seemingly amused by the reaction to his own powerlessness. Now I can see why all the people in front of me had been arguing with the guy.
The next day, also after work, I go to the other Bangalore Air Deccan office. The place looks fairly legitimate. And there’s a cool electronic map of India that shows the status of all current Air Deccan flights. I manage to get to a ticket agent in short time. I show her the flights I want, the same ones with the great price I’d found on the website. Strangely (?), those tickets now cost twice as much. Hmmm… I’m annoyed, but I just want to get the tickets and be done with it. And the price is still way better than the Jet Airways business class tickets. Unfortunately I don’t have enough cash in my pocket. I’m a few thousand rupees short. The ticket agent says I can use the ATM across the street. I ask if she can hold that reservation for me since I’ll be right back. She says she can’t.
I come back ten minutes later, my pockets even more overloaded with cash, courtesy of the fine ATM at ICICI bank. I go back to the same ticket agent. She looks at the computer screen again and – what do you know? – one of my flights now costs 8000 rupees more than it did just ten minutes earlier. That’s nearly $200. So I’m pissed. I thank her for nothing and walk out.
On the drive to the Air Deccan office, I had noticed a small travel agency. So now, not wanting to end another day ticket-less, I walk inside. It’s 5:45pm. The woman behind the counter is exceedingly friendly, which is refreshing. She says they can’t hold reservations, I would just have to buy the tickets outright. Sounds perfect to me.
Weighing all my options, I realize that unless I want to spend a buttload of money, I’ll have to fly into Chennai on one day, and then fly to the Andaman Islands the next. It’s not ideal, but whatever.
The woman behind the counter and I discuss flight options, itineraries and such. We find the flights that best suit my needs. I’m ready to buy the tickets. But she says that I can’t. “But I thought you said I HAD to buy them, that you couldn’t hold reservations?” She says that after six, they stop selling tickets. It’s 6:15 when she tells me this.
So that evening, I go back home, determined to book those Indian Airlines tickets myself at india.makemytrip.com. And of course my payment doesn’t go through. At least the website was kind enough to say it was because of my lovely non-Indian credit card. But then, I figured that out already.
Now it’s today. I call the makemytrip office from work. The young makemytrip man I speak with, Shashank, is very helpful. He sets me up with the flights I want at a reasonable price. He’ll even keep the tickets on hold for 24 hours while he waits for me to fax over some form and a copy of my credit card, front and back. I’m not so keen on the idea of faxing copies of my credit card, but my options are limited. And I had to do something similar (with much trepidation) when I used makemytrip for my December Delhi flights, and that worked out okay.
So I get my papers together and am ready to fax. But where’s a fax machine? I work at the massive Infosys campus, Electronics City. The center of a tech hub in a tech city. It should be easy to find a fax machine, right? Right??
My friend/boss Eshwari knows of only one fax machine on campus (I’m sure there are more hiding). We take the long walk to another building, where two guys attempt, repeatedly, to send out the fax. Doesn’t happen. The machine just won’t send it.
Fine, I say, I’ll just have the concierge at my service apartment send it. He tries to fax and he also fails. Repeatedly. And I’m pretty sure the number I was sending to wasn’t the problem.
So I give a call to good ol’ Shashank at makemytrip. He says I can just email him the forms and the copies of the credit card. Thank goodness. I email him all the needed stuff and the ticket is purchased. At least I think it’s purchased. I know my credit card was charged...
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