Today I am going to tell you about my experience of travelling to India.
As part of my trip, I did a stop of two days in New York with the aim to reduce a little bit how hard it travels to America to India and share time with some friends and other drupalers as you can read at my previous post.
My trip started in Newark airport located in New Jersey, USA. It’s a big airport. My first mistake was passed security so soon, inside Terminal B there are not a food court, and the options available were upscale, and the worst was there wasn’t free internet there. So my recommendation is to verify if there is a food court available outside the secure zone and maybe free wifi.
I choose to fly to Mumbai, India using AirIndia in a nonstop flight of 13 hours and 40 minutes, sounds a lot but was the shorter I found. The embarking process was a little messy due the airline doesn’t have passenger divided into zones so was like in the good old times' everybody trying to get in first.
I bought some snacks just in case. But, I have to say they provide us a dinner and two breakfast, the dinner was Indian food and was really good I could say the best food I tried in an airplane.
The vessel was a Boeing 777 totally packed without turbulence. But, in a long flight is inevitable to feel a little uncomfortable, we landed 30 minutes before
In border control, my experience was really good. Because I have to require an e-visa to visit India, I have to use the designed section for that and guess what only two persons, meanwhile the queue for nationals and tourist from countries with free entry were enormous.
Looks like the airport has free wifi, but require you provide a phone number and they send a code to your phone number, so if you don’t enable roaming in your plan, you are totally screwed.
Passing customs, I have to face the first source of scam around the world, Taxis. I was informed that there are companies inside who provide prepaid services. In my terminal, I found two one with the label prepaid taxi and other without that label.
The company with the label prepaid, inform me that the price to Powai was 310 rupees almost 5 USD dollars, and they don’t receive any foreign currency.
On the other hand, the other company said the price is base on a taxi meter, but after request, they said 800 rupees almost 260% more, but they receive USA dollars. So, I decide just change money to take the first company.
After paying they give you a receipt and then you have to find the taxi inside a parking lot area for taxis near to the exit door. I order a non-AC taxi as you can see in the following picture
When I found the cab, the first problem the driver doesn’t understand a word of English, I show him my receipt, and that say Powai and he said OK moving his head with their traditional way to say yes and no at the same time.
Leaving the airport looks like all taxi drivers have to stop and go out the car maybe they have to pay a fee when my taxi driver returns he asked me for a phone number to call to ask the address, and then they talk in Hindi and everybody was happy.
To end my day I decided to try a small restaurant near to my Airbnb, recommended by my host caretaker, 50% of waiters were barefoot, but when you are in Rome…
I order a Coconut soup with coriander, lamb using Dhaba style and lemon rice, total 270 rupees.
In general a good experience.
Airplane
| Distance (Kilometers) | |
|---|---|
| NYC → Mumbai - India | 12.552 |
| Previously | 3.575 |
| **Total** | 16.127 |