January 21, 2010

The Actual Journey

Leaving Calgary I flew one way to London on the cheapest ($300 taxes incl’d) flights (cheap in service as well… ) dropped off my France bag with friends Jenn and Evan in Epsom England (thanks again!), switched airports and flew to India via a 5 hour stopover in Bahrain. At the airport I met a sweet old lady who was from Citadel (the community next to mine in Calgary – what are the chances?!?) The coolest thing on my journey was by far arriving in London and excitedly peering out my airplane window (shocked to see that London – not only was it not covered in snow but it was still green) and seeing another plane fly below us – NEAT!

I arrived in India with nothing but my little 25 litre backpack which mostly contained presents for Keegan – which mostly consisted of chocolate. I hoped to accessorize my outfit with things from India and leave with a much bigger bag. I was quite excited to have finally arrived in my final destination and was excitedly chatting (and bragging) about the fact that my brother was coming to pick me up from the airport to a nice Irish bloke I met on the plane.

As we collected our bags and stepped out (past the police officers with their nice big riffles set up behind a huge barricade) in the hot Mumbai sun you can imagine my shock when there was no white skinny boy to greet me. There was a little crowd of Indians and then a nice big courtyard – there weren’t even taxi drivers falling over themselves to offer me the best deal – what kind of Asia was this?

I had an ‘oh shit’ moment when I realized that Keegan had never actually confirmed that he would pick me up and maybe he expected me to actually just catch a taxi or rickshaw to his place… hmmm so I settled down in the courtyard to wait and realized I would need some money if I would have to pay the taxi. So off I went to ask those corrupt- I mean nice police officers with those big guns to see if I could go back into the building to get cash – they luckily let me in. As I stood in front of the cash machine I realized how very ill prepared I was for this trip – I didn’t even know how many rupees it was to a Canadian dollar. I really was expecting to get off the plane and be introduced to India via Keegan. My last semester had eaten up my life and thus here I was in India trying to somehow intuitively take out the ‘right amount of cash.’ I ended up taking out 1000 rs. (Which for those of you who don’t know is just about $25 CDN.) (oh and side note – I did have Keegan’s number however I copied it down wrong…opps.)

However this being India that actually lasted me quite a while. I wandered over to the pre-paid taxes to inquire about how much it would cost to get me to Mulund (the suburb that Keegan lived in) 300 rs. Knowing this I wandered back over to my perch in the courtyard and waited, and waited and waited some more. By this time it was starting to get dark – I saw another traveler who was waiting and so I went to ask her about the prepaid taxes (ie. Are they a scam?) Because really that’s half the battle when traveling in Asia – is it a scam or not? She was a downright cute hippy in dreads, with her dirty feet in flip flops (called slippers in India), and wore bangles and anklets and – as most hippies would have done – tried to tell me that I should take the train (it’s really quite simple) because it’s the cheapest and easy.

Maybe if I hadn’t been traveling for 2 nights, and maybe if I had actually prepared myself for India and done some research would I have taken her advice, but alas I was exhausted, I had no idea how far I was from Keegan’s home and so 300 rupees and a taxi sounded pretty damn good to me right now. The train and my penny pinching days would have to wait. The taxi ride took forever and my taxi driver appeared to be new and seemed to stop ever couple of meters to jump out and ask random people on the side of the road. He at one point turned around and told me in broken English ‘No one knows where this is,’ I stared blankly back at him and he promptly turned around and continued driving.

By some amazing stroke of luck I ended up in the right part of town, at the right building and in front of the right door where I was greeted by Shikta and Krutvi as they laughed as they told me Keegan had ended up at the domestic airport (by no fault of his own) ushered me in, fed me cake and warmly greeted me. When keegan finally arrived back home to greet me there was much bantering and teasing about the fact that he missed his sister at the airport and it was a good thing I was a traveler!

So between not knowing a thing about the currency, copying down Keegan’s number wrong, going to the wrong airport our true Hardy adventure begins…