If you’ve ever tried doing an international transit in India (actually, if you’ve ever tried doing anything remotely bureaucratic in India), don’t. It’s the most complicated, chaotic, inefficient and annoying country to fly into or out of, and as it turns out, even flying via the country is a big headache.

I blame this whole episode on lsed. When I told him about my proposed itinerary, he said all the First Class flying was all well and good, but to spice up the experience a little bit I should ride the Million Passenger Train. If you’re not familiar with it, it looks something like this.



As it so happens, these are the local trains in Mumbai. But I was flying to Bangalore. Of course, there was no way in hell I would get onto one of those trains, but I thought I could get away with an intercity First Class train ride and maybe photoshop the proof to look like I’d been on the MPT.

As luck would have it, my plans were ruined the day before I was to depart from Singapore, when I found out I had family visiting in Dubai, and if I went straight back to DXB from BLR, I’d just about manage to spend a day with them. And I thought this would be easy enough.

I got off the plane at BLR and found a door with a big sign over it that said International Transit. I was almost impressed, till I found the door to be locked. There was an X-ray machine and metal detector inside, but no one manning it. I caught hold of one of the people twiddling their thumbs at the arrival gate. It turned out that the ground staff had not received any information from Lufthansa, and until they did, they couldn’t do anything. Explaining to them that I was on two separate tickets didn’t help.

If I wasn’t annoyed enough that I had to wait for the 500 people on the jumbo jet to all get off before I could be assisted, it didn’t help when this gentleman’s supervisor’s supervisor was called in who called her supervisor on the phone, only to eventually tell me that unlocking this door required no less than ten (maybe twenty) approvals and requests and why didn’t I just clear immigration and customs and go back to check in?

I think they sort of missed the point. I didn’t want to clear immigration and customs and check in and immigration and security. I wanted to get straight to the gate. It was 1 am, and my next flight was at 4 am. Hardly perky at that time of day. I eventually relented and made my way to immigration. At least a couple more stamps on the passport would make the ordeal worth it. Or so I thought.

The first mistake I made was to note down my local address on the immigration card as ‘transit’. That’s apparently a big no-no. I walk up to the immigration counter:

‘Where are you coming from?’
‘Frankfurt’
‘Why did you go there?’
‘On holiday’
‘Who is there in Frankfurt’
‘No one’
‘You were traveling alone? Isn’t that boring?’
‘No, it isn’t. I have friends around Europe, I was visiting them’

‘Where are you going to stay?’
‘I’m in transit. I wanted to go through that door but it’s locked so they asked me to clear immigration. I’m going back to check in.’
‘Where are you going to fly to then?’
‘Dubai’
‘Why are you flying via Bangalore? Why didn’t you fly direct’
‘Couldn’t get a flight’

‘Where do you live?’
‘Singapore’
‘What do you do there?’
‘I populate my dad’s bank account with financial black holes’
‘Why are you going to Dubai?’
‘To see family’
‘But you live in Singapore?’
‘Yes, but I have family in Dubai’

‘What does your father do?’
‘He’s an engineer – or that’s what he told me anyway’
‘Why is your family in Dubai?’
‘My brother goes to high school there’
‘Why Dubai? There’s great schools elsewhere too’
‘Mind your own f***ing business’

Ok, that’s not what I said to him. But I was getting very annoyed with his pseudo-friendly attempt to get me to divulge every secret in the family closet. I was visibly annoyed, because I didn’t see how any of this had anything to do with the fact that I had no desire to clear immigration, and that all I wanted to do was go to the lounge (how I would get in, I’m not quite sure).

Obviously, this behavior was suspicious. So I got sent for a secondary screening, where the new guy thought if he asked me enough times, I might decide to change my name. When that didn’t happen, and a supervisor had been called in to assess the situation, I was eventually cleared. First one off the aircraft, last one out of immigration. Even the crew beat me to it.

Anyway, one of the nice ladies escorted me to baggage claim, where an LH rep told me they had no through check in facilities at the airport and that I would need to clear customs and proceed to check in. Customs was fairly painless. But then I found myself out on the street.

If you’ve ever flown out of an Indian airport before, you’ll know that they don’t like to let people in unless you have a ‘ticket.’ I’m not quite sure what a ‘ticket’ is, because I travel with no documents except my passport. No e-tickets and e-boarding passes and all that. I usually remember when I have a flight, and never mind turning up a few hours early for some pre-flight beverages.

Thankfully, though, the security at the airport entrance had a manifest, with my name on it, and let me through.

I don’t know whether I mentioned that my next few flights were on Emirates. In Economy. On an A330, the worst aircraft in their fleet.

I still got to use First check in, and at least the check in agent was able to block the bassinet seat beside me. Then, upstairs, back to immigration, another long story (I tried to be a little less entertaining this time), through security, a pat down, and into the departure hall. I think traveling in and out of the USA is easier than this!

I found the only lounge in the airport, used by every airline that flies out of BLR. It’s a third party lounge, so they refused access based on my arriving Lufthansa First boarding pass. And based on my departing Emirates Economy boarding pass. A couple grand under the table might have worked, but it turns out this was not a pay-in lounge.

I caught hold of the Lufthansa ground staff at the gate for the flight back to FRA and explained my predicament to them.
‘I just got off the flight from FRA and I have a connecting flight in three hours and was hoping I could get access to the lounge.’
‘I’m afraid we only offer lounge access for our SEN and HON circle members, sir.’
‘But I flew in in First.’
‘Certainly sir, we’ll be happy to arrange for lounge access then.’

They were very nice about it, and I was very grateful to them for getting me in. Wasn’t quite as happy when I found out the lounge had 45 minutes of free wifi. Yea, 45 minutes after you register with your phone number and get some access code. And did I mention it was crowded. As in, two seats free in the whole lounge?

5 gin and tonics, and a couple of skype calls to b*tch about what had just happened (and to get friends’ phone numbers for new access codes) later, I was feeling a bit better.

When I eventually got to the boarding gate, about 4 people checked my boarding pass between the gate and the aircraft door. I’m not quite sure what they were checking to see, as it had about 10 stamps on it, from different authorities around the airport.

The flight itself was painfully uneventful. When I sat down and put my eye-shades on, I realized that I can probably navigate any EK aircraft with my eyes shut. And even though these A330 seats are extremely uncomfortable and I got not ten minutes of sleep on the longest 3h30 flight of my life, it was the first time my interaction with the crew was, shall we say, limited. It went along the lines of ‘Hello’ ‘Thank you’ ‘Thank you’ ‘No thanks’ ‘Thank you’ ‘Good bye’.

And of course I was greeted at DXB by an extremely long ‘fast track’ immigration queue. If snails had airports, their queues would move faster. You’re probably wondering what happened when I got home. I’ll save you the gory details. What did manage to get me excited though was a bottle of Dom Perignon 1990 that was sitting in the fridge, waiting for my arrival. So much for running around airports around the world looking for a good glass of bubbly!