Day 1 – Thursday 14th November 2019 – Outward Bound

Travel to exotic places always begins at an unearthly hour.

04:15. Four alarms set and not surprisingly we woke up, two snoozed and nine minutes later I leapt into action. Go and make a cup of tea for the Ever Lovely and coffee to keep me awake, with the added ingredient of Bimuno. This sweet probiotic powder has kept us Delhi belly, Kochi crampy, Cape town crappy, Swakopmund sheissen free for the last 5 years – and long may it continue!

Checked in to Quatar Airways at 06:20 . I always worry about the airline weighing my carry on bag. When loaded for safari with SLR body. Short but flexible,  versatile short and mid range , Long range lenses, macro rings, extender, binoculars, batteries, pebble (new addition courtesy of my ever lovely girlfriend) and iPad it weighs in at c 9kg….well above most airline limits let alone my strength to carry over a distance.  To throw them off the scent I just sling the bag around as if it weighs no more than a bag of sugar! 

The Ever Lovely has a discount airport lounge pass so we checked into the Plaza lounge for breakfast. I tucked into the fat Boy Breakfast with all the trimmings, hoping this was my last non spicy meal until I return later in the month.  Time for a quick G&T, shamefully not Bombay Sapphire but at 07:00 do I really care?

We boarded on time for our 9am take off and settled into our window (A)and middle (B)seats, wondering  who will be in the aisle seat next to us. The Ever Lovely is particular about sitting next to strangers.  So, agreement in place that if it was male she would stay in A and if a female she would move to B.

Our mystery flight partner was Natasha from Bedford. Who turned out to be a very interesting person.  She helped us begin to feel the India groove. She was born in England but both her parents came from the Punjab. She proved a delightful travelling companion and spent much time discussing with us how difficult it was being of western culture but also trying to keep true to her Indian traditions. She was on her post degree gap year,  travelling to Goa to link up a with a bunch of volunteers who were moving onto Kerala to help in the villages there.

Natasha said she had not been to Southern India before and wasn’t sure what to expect.  We reassured her that she will find the country, the food and people very pleasant. She was flying first into Amritsar where her grandparents would pick her up and take them to their family home in Ludhiana. Her grandfather was from Lahore and migrated to Ludhiana during the partition – she is keen to explore this with him but almost nervous as this horrendous time is never aired in the family.

As is our routine – and the best start to every holiday, we each chose to have a pre breakfast, in flight G&T, even though it was only 10:00am.  They were enormous and settled us down quite nicely. We even introduced Natasha to the concept and she became a firm member of the club! Breakfast was pancakes with an orange compote, perfect for the Ever Lovely who only eats sweet things for breakfast. Followed by a cup of coffee and a doze….you have to fill those 6 1/2 hours somehow.

Woke up and searched the entertainment pack nothing really grabbed me so I watched a bit of a Professional Masterchef episode I had downloaded onto the iPad. It didn’t feel right watching Monica, Marcus and Greg cooking French cuisine whilst I was en route to exotica. Let’s go with the flow and plunge headlong into that exotica!

Found a Bollywood film “Gangs of Hindustan” but it became so surreal that I gave up and found instead Main Noon Na. Natasha said that this was one of her childhood faves and a classic! I’m not sure Barry Norman or Mark Kermode would quite see it in that light. Forgive my indulgence but I just have to relay it as I saw it.

The plot was so far fetched but the dance routines were everything you would expect from Bollywood, sudden, explosive and well choreopgraphed and totally over the top.

Opening scene is an all action battle where a special forces Major foils a terrorist attempt to assassinate some important person.  Sadly one of the generals is mortally wounded he confesses to his friend another general.  This second general, asks the special forces Major responsible for the heroics to pretend to be a student at a remote college in Darjeeling where his daughter was studying. The Major refuses until he discovers that the dying general’s confession was that he had an affair and the major was the lovechild. His wife refused to accept the child and left with the legitimate son and never spoke again. Mother and legitimate son were last heard of in….yep you guessed it, in Darjeeling. A pretty plausible plot line so far, Yes? But where is the dancing?

So off pops the Major in his Tank top and bright shiny satchel looking age 40 if a day. A prime target for ridicule by the college cool dude. Cue for extravagant Bollywood dance routine. Challenge after challenge was delivered to the Major until finally Dude challenges him to race to the top of the college building, climb the flagpole and capture the flag. All was going well for dude until he slipped and slid down the roof. Major grabbed his fingertips and pulled him to safety, another excuse for all singing, all dancing extravanganza.  The now best buddies start up a menage a trois with, yes you guessed it the generals daughter.  In the interim the Major had gone through the personal student files in the Head Master’s office (naughty, naughty) and found out that Dude was his half brother. 

In a complete plot sideswipe the unknowing Dude suggests the Major could have the spare room his mum wanted to rent out. She was very poor and needed the money. So now major has the task of not revealing his secret service background and mission to protect general’s daughter, not revealing his identity to dude and dude’s mum.

The Major’s street cred is giving a massive boost in the next fantastic or do I mean, fantastical scene; a pastiche  of the scene from The Matrix when Neo, on the roof of the secure agent base, dodges bullets. The difference is that the agent is replaced a teacher spitting gobbets of  saliva at the students whilst shouting at them at close range . The Major does the Neo thing dodging and diving without getting a drop of spit on him. A hilarious episode and excuse for another dance.  I’m really getting into this film now. 

The terrorists that were after the general’s daughter came to the school. Waiting for their chance to abduct the now three time cherished one.  The Major spotted them. The terrorists hightailed it in their four by four  and the Major took up the chase in a cycle rickshaw, real James Bond car chase spoof stuff…. By now I suspected my fellow passengers were worried about my stifled laughter.

Then the landing announcements came for our descent into Doha. With an hour and a half left I thought I might just get to the end by the time we taxi to the terminal….ah but no they decided to feed us again.

“would you like Veg or non-veg sandwich” I was asked.

“Non-veg” I responded.

The ever lovely asked what the veg option was and was told cheese. She chose this. A small warm box arrived. In the box two mini pies…not sandwiches at all. I enjoyed my chicken and The ever lovely her aubergine.

Back to the film I hoped to finish before we landed. Those damned announcements in English then repeated in Arabic and then Arabic repeated in English, I gave up still with an hour left. Frustrated, I thought, never mind it’ll be on the entertainment on the next plane and I can finish it then.

45 minute transfer at Doha…which is apparently the World’s 4th best airport for passenger experience. I must admit it looked pretty good as airports go.  Looking at the Gate announcement board I was joined by a family of Sikhs also seeking the Amritsar flight…I began to feel the India vibe even more. A couple of selfies, with an unattractive, giant yellow bear somewhat reminiscent of, but not, Pudsy, a catch up on the free wi-fi and onto  plane number two. Searched the entertainment system and Hain Noon Na was not on it….aaaaaaargh! Sadly Natasha was checked in three rows ahead of us so I couldn’t ask her for a summary.

Even though it was a much shorter flight only 3 1/2 – 4 hours The time went slowly. Food lovely. Carrot and apple starter chicken biriyani and one of our favorite Indian desserts payassum, a runny sweet rice pudding spiced with cardamom. Fitful sleep arrived Amritsar 02:50. Looked out of the window in anticipation of seeing our lovely India nothing but hazy orange lights?

Waiting for our bags to come round on the carousel I spotted my first Indian bird of the tour…the first of many Common Mynah we were to see over the next two weeks. It perched on the security sign. You are warned, I am a bit of a bird freak and there are many more to come. We said goodbye to Natasha and wished her an enjoyable experience…we knew that one awaited us!

As we left the air conditioned terminal building the reason for the hazy view as the plane taxied became apparent. A thick, acrid smog hit out at our tired eyes and grabbed our throats…we couldn’t see the cars at the end of the car park…400 yards away.  It was like a heavy yellow mist invoking a very young childhood memory of walking along the embankment in London in the mid 60s in a heavy smog.  Ah India, I thought and began to feel excited. More on the smog later in this series but with a positive vibe on what India is doing to eradicate it.  

Coming next week – our first day in India, cows on the motorway, heavenly food, night trip to the Golden Temple and I become an Indian.

Missed a Blog? Read about it here

• Blog 1. The Yearning for Indian Travel
• Blog 2. London and squeezing a quart into a pint case
• Blog 3. London to Amritsar via Doha and Bollywood
• Blog 4. Amritsar – Grim Discoveries and Glittering Ceremonies
• Blog 5. Amritsar – Making Langar Chapatis and Closing the Border
• Blog 6. Varanasi – Getting closer to the Buddha and taking to the Ganges for a celebration of the River God
• Blog 7. Varanasi – Sunrise on the Ganges and elevation to President
• Blog 8. Reaching Nirvana via Erotic Temple Sculptures – Varanasi to Panna via Khajaraho
• Blog 9. Of leopards and tigers and shortbread biscuits in the bush…
• Blog 10. Bears, tigers and a bird with two names on the set of Lord of The Rings.
• Blog 11. In which I move from Panna to Bandhavgarh reserves in search of more tigers and take up living in a tree