Flying

Written on 16th September:

I am sitting in the duty free area of Mumbai's interntional airport on my first alone-alone international trip. Cool no? Just recently, when I landed at the Bangalore airport, as I hurried to the baggage claim area with a delighted smile on my face, I caught a glimpse of the immigration counters and suddenly longed to go abroad. Not that domestic travel isn't stimulating - but every now and then you get that desire to go somewhere truly far away, with a completely different culture. (actually you can ge that in India. Ok ok, I'm a wannabe firang) And that wish actually came true. Of course its only to Singapore. You don't have the satisfaction of flying at least 8 hours and seeing full-full phoren people..but still you go through immigration and end up at duty free, so you kinda get a feel of the thing.

The que for the the shuttle to the international terminal in the swanky new Mumbai airport is very very long. I stood in it for at least 45 minutes and at one point attempted to get an auto to go to the terminal. The airport guards seemed to have prepared for such an eventuality though and prevented me from doing so. However, I wouldn't miss the shuttle ride in the night for anything. If you love planes, like I do, you will love this ride. The domestic and international terminals are sort of opposite each other and the shuttle skirts the runway while taking you to the international terminal. You see a sea of lights in every colour possible..blue, red, yellow, green...an expanse of black dotted with pinpoints of light. It is quite an amazing sight. And of course you get to see planes taking off and landing. In the dark, the wing to wing lighting of the plane actually makes it look like a disc shaped object - very UFO like. It was quite a surreal experience. The best part was seeing Boeing 747s and Airbus 340s in their hangars. You realise how big the place is when you see it parked in a plane shaped building, where you get to admire its awesome wingspan and marvel at how such a massive thing gets off the group. A note to my engineer friends - science is rather cool at times!

Right now, I am drinking beer at watching an incredibly bad movie at one the numerous bars in this airport. I have finished my first term at IIM A :)

This is what I wrote at the airport when I was rather high on two cans of draught beer. I ended up spending a lovely 4 days in Singapore and have come back to what promises to be an insane 3 months. Sigh, the too-short pleasures of a holiday.