Journey to Vellore, India

I've been wanting to blog since the first day I got to India, but since I have had virtually no access to the internet until a couple of days ago, I have a lot of memory recall to do! I'm gonna start from Friday, October 26th, our departure date.

October 26th, 2007: Depareture Date

Unfortunately, the trip started on a negative note. The first part of my blog will sound negtive, cuz it was, but it gets more positive (I promise). We had learned a few days before our departure date that Air France (our carrier) might be going on strike on October 25th. My sister Pauline (my sister and our travel agent) tried to protect us by booking tickets on another carrier when she heard the news, but Air France would not allow her to do so because the strike was not confirmed! So, of course we found out our flight was cancelled on the morning of the flight. Pauline called Air France and they re-routed us on a flight to Montreal through Air Canada, then from Montreal to Paris via Air France, and from Paris to Chennai via Air France.When we got to Pearson early to avoid the 'crowd', no one from Air France was at the counter until later, and they made the four of us (Elizabeth, Megan, Karima, and I) wait even longer by serving single customers first (what the heck huh?). After a while, we got quite annoyed and a couple of us stood in front of her just to give her the message that we were there! Finally, the Air France person said that she was looking for another carrier cuz she didn't want to take a chance by sending us to Paris and that flight getting cancelled and having us stuck there. We ended up on Lufthansa. We had to fly to Frankfurt, Germany (~6 hours), then wait ~4 hours there, then fly to Hydrabad, India (waited ~7 looong hours), and then fly to Chennai (1 hr). For some odd reason, Liz and Karima's boarding passes got issued easily, Megan and my boarding passes could not be printed. When we arrived at each destination, we had to go to the ticket counter and print out the boarding passes separately. Lufthansa accidently forgot Megan's 2 luggages so it took them a few days to get that to her. When we go to Hydrabad, they gave her a 'female kit' and a wad of money, which stretched pretty far, including the 2,000 rupees to pay for a driver to drive the luggage from chennai to Vellore. Other than the lost baggage, their service was pretty good- the whole time all I remember during the flights were "Vould you lak some vater", "What vould you lak?", "Chicken or veg?", "Vat would you lak to drink?", "Vat may I offer you sir/mam?", "Chai masala?, Chai masala?". I was real tired so I was able to tune out and sleep for most of the flights, but some of the girls said they just wanted the stewardess to leave them alone.

When we got to Hydrabad, we automatically got a sense of what it would be like in India, that is NOTHING comes easy, everything is a process/somewhat confusing, and there is not really a procedure that is followed for anything (mostly disorganized). When we got there, we went through 'customs', which I didn't realize at the time. It was basically filling out a piece of paper while on the place and handing it to a staff when we arrived at the airport. The metal detector machine was also very interesting, it looked like it was from the 1970s or 1980s, the outer casing was made of wood! The process of screening passengers was even more interesting. In other airports I have been to, there is a security person watching you walk through the metal detector, and the machine signals whether another person can walk through next. In Hydrabad, there were no security person watching the metal detector, mulitple people would walk through at one time even when the machine indicated an 'X', meaning do not pass.

After the 'security check' they sent us outside of the airport to issue our boarding passes at an Indian Airlines counter. The security guard who couldn't speak English, wouldn't let us back inside the airport because he didn't realize that the recipt we got from Air France was a ticket and we had to go inside to issue a boarding pass. When we got to the Indian Airlines booth, they said come back in half an hour, so we waited. After half and hour, they said, we don't issue boarding passes until 1 hour before the flight. When they said this, I got really annoyed, cuz the lady told us to wait half an hour and there were 3 guys sitting in the booth doing NOTHING except sitting ther and chatting! I said, "Why can't you issue us a ticket? and the replied, "The gates don't open until 1 hour before the flight". I said, "There is NO WAY that we (7 of us) are sitting out here for 5-6 hours!, you need to let us return back inside." The clerk said, but the airline gates don't open until 1 hour before the flight, and I replied, "I don't care about the airline gates, I understand that the gates don't open until 1 hour before the flight, we don't want to sit outside in the heat with the mosquitos for 5-6 hours, we just want to be inside the airport and the security guy doesnt' understand the fact that this sheet (pointing to our recipt) is our ticket!". My friend Kalaa and her husband (who both speak Tamil) were also complaining to the ticket person, along with another passanger who travelled with us all the way from Pearson. The clerk didn't want 7 people barking at him so he finally came out and told the security guy that it was ok to let us in, so we finally went inside! Man sometimes you have to raise your voice just a little to get people to understand you and do stuff. We were stuck in Hydrabad for 7 hours because our flight was delayed over an hour (we were warned about this). Finally, when we got on Indian Airlines, our flight only took 1 hour to get to Chennai (aka Madras)! We were soooo happy to arrive in Chennai.

When we got to Chennai, a taxi driver that Kalaa arranged, drove us on a very interesting and scary 2.5 hour ride to Vellore. This was our first taste of the traffic here. Basically, no one signals, all they do is honk. We can't figure out what the honking means, but the driver just keeps honking until they get to where they want to go. There were many people riding on motorcycles (in the rain!) and you hardly ever see people wearing helmets. Many of the motorcycles had passengers (also not wearing helmets), often carrying items in both hands ( i.e. shopping bags or an umbrella). When we got to Vellore we were so happy that we did not have to travel any longer, ~35 hours was enough!

I am sad to say that our first impression of Hotel Avana Inn was not so great. Karima had called the hotel 2 months, 1 month and 1 week before we departed. We recieved an information package from the Christain Medical College listing a number of hotels and it's prices for rooms. When Karima called in September and quoted the price that was listed in our package, the man said, "our price went up yesterday", which sounded very sketchy to us, but we still wanted to stay there cuz previous students said it was clean and close to the hospital. Karima told them about the prices listed on the CMC info package and the guy said, "ok, ok". When we got to the hotel, the conceirge denied ever having recieved the calls from Karima. We bargained for 2 hours and he would not budge. Luckily my prayers were answered cuz a administrator from CMC (who was at the hotel for a conference), called the manager and explained how the college gave us old info and that he should help us out, cuz we travelled from so far. The manager was much nicer and decreased the price; 2 double rooms (which is really 1 bed that fits 2 people) for 1800 rupees/night with a complimentry bed (which is really a mattress on the floor). The problem was they only had 1 suite room available that evening. The suite contained only 1 double bed, so 3 of us slept on mattresses.

I was so tired that I went to sleep at 5 pm. I originally thought that I would be able to sleep until 6 am, but woke up at 2 am and couldn't fall back to sleep. Karima was also awake so we both just stayed in bed until 6 am. When we woke up we all had a really good laugh. Megan was given a red mattress that was wet and a white bed sheet. When she woke up, she realized that the bottom of her mattress was wet, since she couldn't see well in the dark, she thought that Liz bled all over the sheet because Liz's pillow case also had some red patchy flowers, which she thought was blood. When we finally turned on the lights, she realized that the red colour was coming off of the mattress, not Liz. After that we got ready for our first day at CMC (this is where my experience in India has been positive)!