Hi, Amit. Just got back from India on Delta/Air France via CDG. On the way to India, we arrived at 2E and departed from 2C, and I'm happy to report it was quick and super-easy.
The fastest way to do it is to take the airport bus, as it reduces the trips through security. 2C is in the direction the buses go after pickup at 2E, so it's quick. It took us about 20min from disembarking our transatlantic flight until we were standing at the gate in 2C for our India flight. The process is reasonably user friendly:
1. Disembark and follow the signs for "Correspondances/Flight Transfers."
2. You will pass some info desks. These agents tend to be very helpful and should be your first stop if you have questions and/or need onward boarding passes printed. Greet them with "Bonjour," switch to English, and they'll generally treat you well. We did Delta online check-in, and the boarding passes it printed were good all the way to India.* (see below)
3. Walk on to the bus stop, clearly marked as "2A/2B/2C/2D/2F". There will be a listing of upcoming buses on a monitor. Just get on the first one that shows a stop at 2C. Don't bother waiting for the express, as it's the difference between 0 and 1 stops. There's an agent at the bus stop who kind of tries to look at people's boarding passes and get them on the right bus.
4. Get off at 2C. Like I said, it's either next stop or 1 stop later. You're not even on the bus 5 minutes.
5. Pass security. Was pretty painless. Remember that in France, unlike the USA, cameras have to be taken out of the bag, not just video-cameras.
6. Walk up a half-flight of stairs, and you're standing in 2C. Don't get your rollaboard-bag all ready to roll, as you really do need to walk the half-flight of stairs. There's prob an elevator somewhere, but I didn't see it.
Like I said, took me 15-20min, tops, kind of toward the earlier end of transatlantic arrivals (but far from first widebody flight in).
Keep in mind that
people transfer easier than baggage at CDG, so pack with the expectation that your checked luggage will arrive in India a day later than you, and prob arrive at your hotel about 12 hours after that (so 36h after you). Did for us.
* Delta's and Air France's computer systems do not talk well with each other, and this has been confirmed to me by both sides. The online check-in did work, but make sure to have the Air France PNR for your itinerary (obtained by calling Delta and not the same as the Delta PNR). Look up on
www.airfrance.us and check your seat assignments. Make sure you have actual AF seat assignments, as the Delta ones may or may not mean anything. If there are 2 different sets of seat assignments, CALL DELTA (now handling all calls for AF in the USA) and have them get you AIR FRANCE SEAT ASSIGNMENTS. Most DL agents understand this glitch, and if you get a good one, the agent will actually call Air France and have them put a seat assignment in their computer system. This one will "stick" and show on both the AF and DL websites. Same is true for online check-in. Go ahead and check-in on
www.delta.com, but then go to
www.airfrance.us, look up your PNR, and make sure it says "checked-in" next to your AF CDG-India segment. Fortunately, I didn't learn this the hard way, but many on Flyertalk did. It did cost me a couple hours on the phone with Delta (who made many calls to Paris on my behalf) to get the seat mess straightened out, though, so learn from my time-investment.