Kolkata Trip!!

The Departure

The mild vibration and the very much familiar tone of the alarm on my mobile disturbed my sound sleep, as I realized I had to pull myself out of the bed; else, we would miss the flight! Having packed all the necessary and not so necessary stuff, and managing to sleep for around two and half hours, I woke up at around 0230 hrs on 22^nd June 2007. Trying hard to keep my eyes open, I somehow freshened myself and woke Santosh up. As reluctant as a kid going to school, he finally got himself all set and we left home at around 0325 hrs.

One major task was to reach the Airport atleast 1 hr before the departure, which was at 0545 hrs. So, not taking any chances we hired an Auto and reached the HAL Airport, Bangalore at 0405 hrs. On the way, just to make sure that Ajith is also gonna make it in time to the Airport, I rang him up and he said he’s leavin in ten minutes, but actually sounded as if he’d just got up (bugger!!). He reached around 15 minutes after us and we pushed our luggage bags into the X-Ray Scanning Machine. Walked into the Airport Terminal for the First Time (guess all 3 of us for the first time), and headed towards the counter of the most economic Airlines Service providers – Air Deccan. After collecting the Boarding Pass and handing over the luggage, we had to go through the Security Check-in and then had almost 1 hr to spend before the flight would take off…! (We weren’t really too early, but since it was the wee hours of the dawn, the airport wasn’t crowded at all). At around 0530 hrs, the passangers of the flight DN636 were requested to board the bus at Gate #3. And like it would happen in any bus/railway station, people of all ages just darted towards the Gate!! We too managed to sneak in and got into the bus, which took us to the A320 parked beside the runway. Again, as expected, everyone started dashing towards the flight as soon as the bus reached to it and jumped into the seats of their choice, without even noticing the beautiful Airhostesses greeting them!! All this was because Air Deccan doesn’t mention any seat number on the boarding passes, and passangers are free to sit anywhere, among the seats meant for them. Having chosen the most appropriate seats, to the best of our senses, we settled down and were eagerly waiting for the Captain to announce that the flight was ready for take-off!!

Taxying through the various, quite bumpy paths, the Aircraft was at the fag end, facing the long stretched and thankfully smooth runway. All along this way, the Airhostess (definitely very pretty, I must agree :)) demonstrated how to fasten the seat belts and made sure all the passangers had done it. They also trained us on how a Life Jacket needs to be worn, in case of emergency landing (read falling!) on the water (sea/ocean!!). No sooner did the Captain announce that the plane was ready for take off, did the jets start roaring at the top of their lungs and the plane started moving at a speed, which I could compare to the Lightning speed..!! (li’ll exaggeration involved). And within seconds we were lifted off the ground. I was just so thrilled with this experience and looking out of the extremely small window when suddenly everything went blurr and thick white fog surrounded us. The skies in Bangalore and also around were not so friendly and we were into the clouds for quite a long time, throughout the journey.

Once the plane took off the runway and started it’s ascend, the lights were switched back on inside the aircraft and we were told that we could release the seat belts, but were requested to keep them on (which obviously no one did). And I experienced something quite strange; my ears would get blocked every couple of minutes and I would realize they are blocked only when I gulped something or cleared my throat and the ears again opened. This was, probably, because of the pressure difference in the atmosphere as we were ascending to higher altitude. Besides this, we experienced turbulence all the way till the plane ascended to a much higher altitude and the skies got a lot clearer. We got to know about the altitude that we reached only when the Flight Captain Mr. …. (I’m sorry, I forgot his name) announced the flight details, midway, that we were flying at an altitude of 35,000 feet above Metric Sea Level, to our left was the city Bhubaneshwar and to the right was Bay of Bengal. One interesting thing, which I was observing just as the captain made this announcement, was a very thin white crucked line way below us on the ground. Only then did I realize that it was the Eastern Coastal line of the Sub-continent!! And I will want to mention another interesting thing, which I observed – “All along the way I saw clear waters of the small rivers joining the Bay of Bengal. Both the river and the sea were very much blue and the water was clear. But as we crossed Bhubaneshwar, the rivers turned brown in color, muddy and dirty looking!! (No offence to anything or anyone, plz). And as we reached closer to Kolkata, even the sea turned the same…!! (To much of my surprise!!!).” At this point I would like to mention, one of our friends is from a place which lies somewhere in this stretch. Guys, you know who I’m referring to… :)

The remaining part of the journey was quite boring and uneventful (very sorry to say that!!), except for the “Landing at the Kolkata International Airport” part. This thing scared the shit out of us (atleast me)!! As we approached the Airport, the pilot had to taxi around for a while as the runway was not free/ready for landing. And finally when he got the green signal, he at once raced toward the runway, and started descending rapidly. We could see the land closing in below us and still the runway was not in picture! After a while the runway appeared right below us, but the plane still experienced turbulance and was trying to align properly for the “Safe Landing”. We were hardly a couple of hundred feet above the ground (or may be a li’ll more) and this dude was still struggling to align the damn plane along the runway!! Man, I had a feeling I won’t be able to have another flight experience after this… Ultimately, by Jove, the plane touched ground and he had managed to land us all ‘safely’!

As we collected the handbags and other stuff and stepped out of the flight, a “HEAT WAVE” hit us and I felt as if I were entering a Furnace or something!!! We thought this might be because of the sudden change in the temperature between the inside of the flight and the outside atmosphere, but we were wrong! This insane “HEAT WAVE” continued and remained till we boarded the flight again (for the return journey, a week later)!!! Trying hard to adapt to the insanely hot and humid weather of Kolkata, we sneaked through the crowd, got the luggage bags and headed towards the Exit. Nilanjan had called us immediately after we landed and informed that he would be waiting outside the Airport. And much to our surprise, he was there at the right time!! :) Stuffed in all our luggages into his car and hopped in and he drove us to his place, through the pretty clean streets to begin with, which later turned into narrow and dirty and crowded and then over-crowded and finally dangerously over-crowded streets!!! And there it was, the destination had arrived…..