Arriving
at the airport in the early morning you need to get past the guards at the
entrance; showing your passport and tickets are enough. One in the group got a
bit ahead of us and went through without any problems. When the rest of us
showed up the guard looked at us and began waving us away – apparently he
wanted us to go to one of the other doors to get checked there instead. On the
way over there looking back you could see him letting single passengers in at a
time, apparently a large group (of 9) was too much work. His colleague at the
other door also seemed perplexed why he hadn’t let us in.
We
checked in as a group but had to show documents individually. I asked nicely
(despite it being early and only after 2 hours of sleep I can be nice) if it
was possible to move/upgrade me to a seat at an emergency exit. She looked up
and looked at me as if I had asked her to give me upgrades to 1st
class for all future flights, scoffed loudly and went back to work completely
ignoring me from then on. Nice.
We were
given name tags for our carry-on luggage, apparently as to confirm that the
check-in counter had approved them as carry-ons. The security check went
without a hitch, being early there weren’t too many people around. I found my
bag lying ready for me after I came through the detector and they confirmed I
could take it. We wandered the airport and basically just tried to kill time
while waiting for boarding to start.
Entering
the plane the security guy flipped when he saw me. Apparently the security check
should have given me a stamp of some kind on that luggage tag, but because they
seemed to have missed it I must have been smuggling everything from drugs to
the entire Taj Mahal and half their nuclear arsenal with me on board the plane.
He took me aside, let others on, and asked me to show him the contents. He was
a very unhappy Indian guard, but he let me go at last. I had barely gotten on
board the plane together with one of the others from the group before they
started closing the doors. I hurried to my spot, found it in the middle of
everything, but being the last one to enter I just grabbed to two seats at the
window next to it instead – the plane had plenty of free seats so you were able
to move around and claim different – better – seats if you were fast.
The rest
of the trip home was fine. Well, almost. I met a very large hairy Indian guy on
the plane. And completely unrelated; a very large hairy Indian guy learned he
had to remember to lock the lavatory door when doing his business on the plane.
We had a couple of hours in Istanbul airport which were spent on sitting in a
café and getting something to drink and eat, and the flight from there was very
uneventful. The moment we left India things went much more smoothly. And coming
back to Copenhagen everyone got their bags. Success!
Once
again big thanks to Susanne, Bo (again), Per (again, and have a great trip
around India and Nepal!), Steffen, Christina, Mads, Thomas, Lars, Tina and
Annika for being such an outstanding group on this trip. You guys are amazing –
and after my recent realization that means a lot to me. I hope we will meet
again sometime, that would be awesome!
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