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This travelogue traces my journey from Mumbai, India to Blacksburg, Virginia, USA. Date: 25th to 27th Jan, 2011.

The route taken was-

Flight #1: Kuwait Airways flight KU 301 from Mumbai (BOM) to Kuwait (KWI)

Flight #2: Kuwait Airways flight KU 101 from Kuwait (KWI) to New York (JFK) via London Heathrow (LHR)

Plus, New York to Blacksburg, VA by a combination of several means of transport!

* * * * *

As I entered the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport by car, the scene left me stunned- the entire area around airport resembled a huge war zone, buzzing with construction activity even at 2.30am. One look around and you know something really big is going on- the Mumbai airport renovation and upgradation project is under progress on a mammoth scale. With 26th January just around the corner, security was high and the visitor’s lounge at Gate D of International Departures Terminal 2 was closed, so hundreds of passengers and their family and friends had no option but to sit down on the footpaths. Only this time I noticed Mumbai airport, knowingly or unknowingly, has flights to different parts of the world clustered together, and so around my flight to Kuwait, there were flights to Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Bahrain, Dubai and every possible Gulf city that you can name. As a result, the overall crowd at the airport was also very different than what it is around midnight when the Europe bound flights are clustered. As we waited for check-in to begin, the crowd profile made the airport look like a ST bus depot- one reason why I would not prefer flight via Gulf next time!

I was travelling with my classmate Bharat. After waiting for half an hour on the footpath, we decided it would be better off waiting inside so left for check-in at 3.30am. The check-in was smooth but Immigration had a serpentine queue, which took an hour. The security check was quite chaotic. Having got used to the US system of removing shoes, jackets, belt, mobile phone and putting everything through the X-ray scanner, I was preparing for the same but was stopped. Apperently the Indian system is different- you send your bag and laptop through X-ray scanner but keep wallet, belt and watch on and pass through a metal detector! Duh! Obvious enough, the metal detector beeps for every single passenger! Then a CISF constable manually frisks you and asks to remove all metal objects aside! No idea what the logic behind this is! Completing this rather comical procedure, we were into the gate area by  4:45am for our 6:00am departure. There were boards all around advertising “Free Wi-Fi at CSIA”. I decided to try if this was true. Took out my laptop and connected to CSIA Wi-Fi and then came to know the farce- in order to use the Wi-Fi, you need to SMS a code shown on the screen to some Indian number! What the hell! So, if you are travelling abroad and not carrying your Indian cellphone (true for most passengers), you cannot access Wi-Fi! Dumb!

As we waited at Gate 10, there were announcements of a Nas Air (first time in my life I heard this name!) flight to Riyadh from Gate 14 and some missing passengers. Even after repeated announcements, the missing man was not found and as a result half a dozen CSIA staff ran all around the gate areas, looking at ‘suspicious’ (read: illiterate) passengers and asking them individually which flight they were headed to. As I said, the crowd at this hour consisted of semi-literate labourers flying to Gulf countries to work at construction sites, most of them not knowing English, making life difficult for the airport staff. When the missing passenger was not found even after an hour, two Nas Air air hostesses and stewards also joined the wild goosechase all over the terminal! In the meantime our flight was ready for boarding and the staff announced that only passengers with pink Priority Boarding stickers should come to the gate to board, but who cares! The entire crowd sitting around got up at once and formed a big queue to board! Total ST bus depot environment! The crowd filled in quite quickly and we had a pushback at precisely 06.00am scheduled time.

The plane was a fairly old Airbus A320 with 3-3 seat configuration and no in-flight entertainment, not even the big screens at the center of the cabin! Around an hour after departure, dinner/breakfast whatever you call it was served and after that there was no option but to try and sleep until we reach Kuwait. We started our descend into Kuwait around 7:45am local time and for as far as the eyes could see there was sand and more sand with roads criss-crossing the desert. We landed at Kuwait International Airport at 8:00am and once out of the plane we immediately went to the Kuwait Airways Transit Helpdesk to enquire about our connecting flight. The lady at the counter was talking to a passenger whose flight was delayed and gave him a food coupon and busy in her own world, unknowingly handed over one coupon to me too although my flight was scheduled on time! Bharat suggested we go back to her and ask for one more coupon since we were two passengers but I insisted not to be greedy and enjoy one free coupon! Quickly grabbing sandwich and a cake with the free coupon we went to the gate where the Kuwait-London-New York flight was scheduled. On my previous flight I had noticed that there was hardly any security check at Kuwait airport but this time it was different. The previous day a suicide bomber had attacked Moscow airport so security was extra tightened. Security and boarding took an inordinately long time and just before departure the captain announced what I had already guessed- “I apologise for the delay in boarding. This is due to extra security checks requested by US and UK authorities!”

The Boeing 777-200 for this leg of the flight had individual TV screens for all passengers but how many of those worked, only time would tell. The take-off was over the main city of Kuwait giving some stunning views of the rather large city located with desert on one side and sea coast on the other. The plane had a 3-4-3 seat arrangement. Bharat occupied the window seat, I had the middle seat while a middle-aged Arabic man occupied the aisle seat. An hour into the flight the Arabic man got up and went somewhere, never to return, thus giving us one extra seat to spread out on! By now everyone had tried fiddling with their TV screens and 90% of them did not work. In our row, the screen for window seat worked for some time, the middle screen’s menu was controlled by aisle seat’s control panel (which I realised after an hour!) and vice versa. The middle screen worked but its sound did not, the aisle seat’s sound worked but screen did not! I gave up and rather spend time reading Kuwait Times newspaper which provided entertainment for a couple of hours. After the food was served, which was rather delicious Indian cuisine, I spent the remaining flight figuring out all sorts of different sitting/sleeping/crouching poses possible with two seats at my disposal but found none comfortable. The arrival into Heathrow was through rain clouds, spoiling any chances of seeing London city from air. We were given one hour to get out, pass security and come back to the same plane. From my previous experience at Heathrow I knew the security guys specifically tend to choose brown skinned (Asian) passengers for “random” checks so we ran through the overbridge to be ahead in queue giving enough time to go through the normal security and enhanced security. Luckily this time we were not asked to step aside for extra checks but after completing the security when we went back to our scheduled gate, there was a second security layer to be passed by all passengers. Not just us, our plane, coming from ‘suspicious location’ (Kuwait) was thoroughly frisked, delaying boarding by 20 minutes. Finally we departed at 11.35am local time, 35 minutes behind schedule.

This leg of the flight was also spent in fiddling with non-working TV screen and trying in vain to make the best use of two seats left to myself, but this time for entertainment I had a couple of free magazines and a free copy of The Daily Mail (which is a gossip newspaper like India TV!) which kept me occupied for quite a long time. The food this time had British taste samosas and Arabic taste falafel and dinner later was again pure Indian- paneer mutter, pulao, dal etc with mocha coffee cake. The food was so delicious on all legs it made up for the lacklusture in-flight entertainment. By some stroke of luck, we managed to cut one full hour from the 7 hours flying time and landed at JFK International Airport at 5.25pm local time, 35 minutes before time in spite of starting 35 minutes late!  After experiencing nice weather for a month, it was back to Ice Age with snow scattered all over the airport, but this was just the beginning. More snow adventure was yet to come. The customs, baggage claim and immigration ended swiftly in under an hour. As we were exiting from the terminal, a hefty African-American taxi driver shouted in Hindi- “Sir, gaadi chahiye kya?” What all one has to do to stay ahead of the competition! We went straight to the AirTrain station and took the train to Jamaica station from where we transferred to the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) train to New York’s Penn station. This gigantic station with tracks spread over three underground levels and dozens of platforms is quite a task to negotiate, especially in evening peak hours. We were to take the 7:35pm NJ Transit train but in spite of it already being 7:25pm, it was not announced which platform it would depart from. Finally the announcement was made at 7:30pm, after which we had to quickly locate the elevator to go down to platform with our luggage and enter the train before the office crowd fills it up. Fortunately it turned out to be an Express service halting only at Secacaus Junction, Newark and New Brunswick, thereby keeping out a lot of daily commuters who alight at other stations, especially Metro Park. Bharat got off at New Brunswick and headed home while I continued upto Trenton from where I changed over to a SEPTA train to reach Philadelphia’s beautiful 30th Street Station at 10:30pm and was picked up by a relative to spend the night at their place.

The next morning, there was unexpected snow and my aunt who was to drop me back to 30th Street station so that I could take a bus to Blacksburg, Virginia, had a hard time driving her car in untreated roads made slippery by rain and snow. What would have otherwise taken 15 minutes took us an hour and as a result the Megabus in which I had my ticket booked left before I could reach its stop! Aunt dropped me at the station and left for work, and I was left to figure out alternatives to head home. Thankfully the station has a huge beautiful concourse to sit and more importantly, Amtrak provides free Wi-fi in the station building without the need to register or have Amtrak tickets! Delta had already cancelled my New York-Roanoke flight due to bad weather and were offering me a flight from New York next day. The sole bus with connection to Blacksburg had also left so it was clear I would have to spend the day in Philadelphia, and more snow was predicted for the night and next day. My aunt, scared from skidding her car thrice earlier in the day told me it would not be possible to drive me back to station next morning if I stay at her place. Just then I realized one of my friend- Sriram stays in Philadelphia quite close to the station. I called him up and he gave me directions to come to his home by taxi, and I reached there while it was still snowing but no so much as to close roads. By evening the snow had stopped and things looked good, but it was the calm before the storm, quite literally. By 6.00pm it started snowing and got heavier by the hour and by midnight, 16 inches of snow had ravaged Philadelphia!

Next morning, Sriram had called for a taxi at 6:45am to take me to the station but with so much snow, no taxi was operating. The city transit buses had also ceased operations. Now there was only one option left- walk! So here we were, out on the snowed out streets of Philadelphia, making our way to the station trudging two bags along. It took us 30 minutes and was quite an exercise. Once at the station, I realised the Megabus service from Philadelphia was cancelled! And now enters the saviour- the huge Schedules indicator of Amtrak at the station concourse showed all services running and ‘On Time’! Immediately I bought a ticket from the counter for the 7.43am Northeast Regional service to Washington DC and waited in peace for its arrival. At 7.50am passengers were asked to go down to the platform and after ten minutes of wait, a 6 coach train completely covered in snow as if it had just played snowfight came in led by a shiny modern HHP-8 engine, with the ting..ting..ting sound of ringing bells. For some reason, even today, even the most modern high speed American trains always enter the station with a constant ringing of a bell on the engine, a practice from the 19th century! I found a window seat next to the empty luggage space, effectively giving me infinite legroom to stretch out and immediately after departure, the train speeded up to over 100 miles per hour, blowing snow from the tracks all around, almost like a mini snowstorm following the train all along!

We had a clinically perfect run until Baltimore and a few minutes after departure from BWI Airport station, the train came to a sudden halt in the middle of nowhere. First I thought it must be a red signal ahead, nothing unusual. But five minutes later, the conductor announced over the speakers in the coach- “Sorry folks. One of the pantographs of our engine has broken and we have lost power. Since the engine has two of those, we will now try getting the other one up and restart the train!” Damn! The most powerful, hi-tech and modern railway engine in America is also not immune to failure! This could not have come at a worse time. The train was scheduled to reach Washington DC at 9:45am and I had an 11:45am bus to take from DC. if I miss that connection I stay stranded in DC for one full day! 15 minutes passed, no luck. Meanwhile a DC bound Acela Express sped past us on the adjacent track, without stopping to help us. Another 20 minutes passed by and another Amtrak train came on the adjacent track, but this one slowed down and stopped right next to our train. The conductor announced after ten minutes- “We are evacuating this train and everyone will transfer to the adjacent train. All passengers are requested to come to the Cafe Car for evacuation!” I picked up my bags and rushed to the Cafe Car which was right next to my coach. They had put two small tables on the snow covered ground and all passengers were to climb down stairs, onto the two small tables and climb up into the Cafe Car of adjacent train. Our rescuer was the Carolinian, heading to Charlotte and had quite a few empty seats to every passenger from our train managed to find one in the new train.

The whole procedure took half an hour and we departed at 10.35am. Now every minute was crucial if I was to make the connection. The conductor announced we would be reaching DC at 11.05am and that made me feel a bit better. After a brief halt at Carrilton, we slowed down and the conductor announced- “We are reaching Washington Union Station. We will have a crew change here. Also, we will change from electric power to diesel power.” The rail-fan in me wanted to wait and see this power change procedure but there was no time. I ran up the concourse and straight to the taxi stand and asked the first available cab to take me to the Megabus bus stop. The driver dropped me there at 11.30am and a long queue of passengers waiting to board the bus to Christiansburg was a happy sight to see! At 12.00pm the hefty African American driver announced- our arrival time in Christiansburg is 4.20pm but I will make sure we are there by 4.00pm latest! Downtown DC to Christiansburg by car takes 4 and half hours without traffic, so I thought the driver was just being overconfident, but it was not to be. In spite of snow-induced traffic on I-66, he cruised through and stopped the bus directly at the stop in Christiansburg at sharp 4.00pm! A friend had come to pick me up from there by car and by 4.30pm I was finally home, after one heck of an adventurous journey!

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