, with all my colleagues and co-workers bidding me farewell I was a little sad to leave such a wonderful group of people but this sadness was masked by my excitement to return to India. One of the co-worker even commented that she has never seen me this happy in past 2 years as she has seen me in last 2-3 weeks.Snow from Thursday had not melted yet and Boston covered in white snow reminded me of my first year in US when I saw my first snowfall. As much as I hated the snow (the aftermath) I think I will miss snow the most in India.
At the Airport:
Left early from work and got at the airport almost 31/2 hours before the flight. Even with long lines et al, was able to check in my baggage on time and without any problems. The flight was delayed initially due to boarding and the later due to some other technical issues but we were still hoping to make up the time.
En route:
The flight was ok, the usual vegetarian food et al. Spent most of the time sleeping
.Mumbai:
The Mumbai airport is going through metamorphosis
, you see direction signs all over the place, clean restrooms and much less of bothering staff (not to say that they don't exist anymore). Got out of the plane at midnight, cleared immigration and was waiting at the luggage claim area by 12:15, I don't remember clearing immigrations in US that soon.Just as I was all happy that my journey has ended well I realized that my luggages is missing
. Went to the NWA counter and they traced it to Amsterdam but I wasn't going to get it before Monday. One stupid thing that I did was to keep the bangalore contact addresses in my check-in luggage all I had were bunch of phone numbers but the CS guy was nice enough and agreed to take just a phone number so that they can call me once my luggage is arrived.For people traveling on Jet Airways they have a through check-in facility at the international airport and an airport shuttle to the national terminal, which is a great help.
It seems like people in India trust print outs much more than the passport, here's what happened
:I went to the Jet airways counter and asked for my boarding pass, the lady there wanted to see my ticket and I told her that it was an E-Ticket for which I did not bring the printout. She almost got mad (but kept her smile on her face) and asked me how can I travel without a ticket. I explained to her that when I did an online check in it refused to print a boarding pass for my Jet airways flight and finding my ticket should be as easy as typing my name. She still wasn't convinced but asked me show my previous boarding pass and used the confirmation number to find my reservation.
National Terminal:
The Mumbai National Terminal does not look any less that the US airports, but we'll have to wait a while since it is still under construction. The only thing that irritated me here was the multiple security checks, they first did a security check which I guess is done by the airport security and walking another 500 ft Jet security again did the same checking
.The Jet airways flight was great (with nice breakfast at 4'o clock in the morning). Overall it was a nice trip.
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