Friday, June 03, 2005
The Journey from Bangalore to Toronto
This is ( hope it would not become a 'was' by the time I post this blog .... ) my first international trip... I was excited to say the least , I had a flight to Chennai at 8 pm that day. A few people were kind to see me off ... Mom, dad, Akhila and Bavagaru too. My friends too came . . Kirthi and Sankar were there(Thanks guys...So nice of you ) . I knew that Suresh would be accompanying me from the start till the end of the trip.
You know what happens at Chennai... when I just step out the aircraft , a hot gust of wind as if sweeps me off my feet. Gosh it was so hot and sultry that day in Chennai, and we knew that we have to spend almost 5 hours at the airport waiting for the flight to Paris. So we quickly went to the cloak room dumped our luggage there and went out to try and see if we would get any thing to eat ... Na .. its such a "veeraan" place .. the area near the airport, and it was also almost 9 pm. There was a decent restaurant in the airport itself where we had a double tiffin, we never knew that, that was the food that we were going to survive with for the next 40 hours .. It was tough to kill the remaining time.
We went into the international airport at 12 am and found that there were no airfrance flights scheduled that day , oh .. wait . .it was an airfrance flight operated by delta airlines that we had to board....education for me .. the delta airlines staff grilled Suresh with so many questions but they dint ask me any questions and let me in ... There is a sea of difference between the check in areas of international and domestic airports in India. the international one was well maintained ..
We went to the duty free shop and found that any thing and every thing had a price tag which was double what it is outside. and then we sat at the departure gate waiting for the boarding call.
Finally it came .. the departure call .. we boarded the aircraft and it was not amazing , it was like those domestic aircrafts. only thing different was the navigation system which shows where the aircraft is and a 500km range map around it .. after almost 8 hours of travel, we were served some pooris, two small pooris .. and some curry .. uneatable but some how pushed it in .. Finally we reached paris.
It was exactly the opposite in Paris to what happened in Chennai .. as soon as we got out of the aircraft a cold gust of wind as if swept me off my feet. It was really cold .. could be any where between 12-15 C...pleasantly surprising...We had to go to this Terminal 2F.. I was expecting that it would take hardly five minutes after boarding the bus , but it took almost half an hour for us to reach the terminal 2F. And I am sure we would have travelled at least 20km in that half an hour. Aircrafts were parked like buses are parked in Imlibun/Majestic. No .. Even Majestic/Imlibun would not have so many buses. That was the Charles-De-Gaulle airport..the CDG as they call it .. I was hoping to see the Eiffel Tower while the aircraft was landing but .. alas.. I could not .. In the CDG - 2F we found so many duty freeshops andevery thing was sooo expensive, I found a few french perfumes which were good. I thought I am anyway going to come back to the CDG so i wil postpone it. We were dying to have some coffee at least .. But we had indian rupees and USD , I know USD would be accepted , but we had 100$ bills and we did not know whether it would be a good thing to change 100$ for a coffee .. then we roamed around in the terminal 2F and Suresh took some pictures in his camera.
We boarded the Airfrance aircraft to Toronto after 4 hours of landing at Paris. There was a senior citizens conference or some thing in Paris for which many people came from Canada. All of them senior citizens, a senior is 60-70 years of age. Could have been better .. :-( .. do not want to say any thing more than that ! ! The flight that we boarded was supposd to take us to Toronto in 8 hours and all of it was Day Journey, There was personal TV and stereo but none of the programs were of my choice. And we were HUNGRY... and you know what, he was about to serve us .. a non veg meal. we said it was better to stay hungry than eat non veg. But he did give a few loaves of bread and jam .. Since I had slept well in the flight from Chennai to Paris, I was not even getting sleep.
Here it is , Toronto... after 8 hours of non stop travel we reached Toronto. I was expecting it to be easy at the immigration and customs. But I was concerned about whether my baggage would arrive or not... As expected, the immigration guy asked me two simple questions , and let me go off , Then I stood at the baggage claim area praying that my baggage should arrive. It did arrive. Then it was the customs woman's turn.. she grilled me with so many questions whether i brought any food, how long i was going to stay, where i was going to stay .. which languages i spoke.. whether I brought any business related material for selling in Toronto ?? and so on .. After satifactorily answering all her questions, I went out .. Suresh was already waiting there .,. he was not asked any questions.
I was sure that Sivaram would come to pick us up at the airport...I picked up the phone and talked to him on his mobile.. mama.. vacchava leda ? vacchanu mama terminal 3c deggara unnanu . .that was where even i was .. we walked almost more than a kilometer to go to his car .. an intrepid .. chevy i think ?? It took us 45 minutes to reach the hotel..." Staybridge suites " Sivaram was amazed to see the room ... but i was not .. he said we could go to a temple. Wow !! a temple .. what a way to start the stay in Toronto !! I jumped and said yes, I did have to plan how to go to the office on sunday but that could be done by suresh and even if not , i though I could do it later myself.
Had a good bath and we went to the temple. The temple had many "templets" if i am allowed to call them that ! went to each of them and .. now .. the most important thing .. food !! HUNGRY .. I said I dont care how uch it costs i want to go to indian restaurant and eat well.. by the time we left the temple it was 8 30. Siv I think was sure that we would not get any thing Indian , or even canadian for that matter at that point in time, 8 30 on a sunday night. But he could not say that to a hungry man .. So he drove me around quite a bit. we did find and indian restaurant but it was closed. So we went to into another restaurant, looked like a very posh and expensive one, "Swiss Chalet" was its name. The menu card had nothing interesting except for some fries, I ordered fries, he ate chicken , we had a chocolate drink at the of it, bill was just 25 .. He dropped me back at the hotel and left ..
That was the journey from the HAL Airport, Bangalore to the Staybridge suites , Toronto.
You know what happens at Chennai... when I just step out the aircraft , a hot gust of wind as if sweeps me off my feet. Gosh it was so hot and sultry that day in Chennai, and we knew that we have to spend almost 5 hours at the airport waiting for the flight to Paris. So we quickly went to the cloak room dumped our luggage there and went out to try and see if we would get any thing to eat ... Na .. its such a "veeraan" place .. the area near the airport, and it was also almost 9 pm. There was a decent restaurant in the airport itself where we had a double tiffin, we never knew that, that was the food that we were going to survive with for the next 40 hours .. It was tough to kill the remaining time.
We went into the international airport at 12 am and found that there were no airfrance flights scheduled that day , oh .. wait . .it was an airfrance flight operated by delta airlines that we had to board....education for me .. the delta airlines staff grilled Suresh with so many questions but they dint ask me any questions and let me in ... There is a sea of difference between the check in areas of international and domestic airports in India. the international one was well maintained ..
We went to the duty free shop and found that any thing and every thing had a price tag which was double what it is outside. and then we sat at the departure gate waiting for the boarding call.
Finally it came .. the departure call .. we boarded the aircraft and it was not amazing , it was like those domestic aircrafts. only thing different was the navigation system which shows where the aircraft is and a 500km range map around it .. after almost 8 hours of travel, we were served some pooris, two small pooris .. and some curry .. uneatable but some how pushed it in .. Finally we reached paris.
It was exactly the opposite in Paris to what happened in Chennai .. as soon as we got out of the aircraft a cold gust of wind as if swept me off my feet. It was really cold .. could be any where between 12-15 C...pleasantly surprising...We had to go to this Terminal 2F.. I was expecting that it would take hardly five minutes after boarding the bus , but it took almost half an hour for us to reach the terminal 2F. And I am sure we would have travelled at least 20km in that half an hour. Aircrafts were parked like buses are parked in Imlibun/Majestic. No .. Even Majestic/Imlibun would not have so many buses. That was the Charles-De-Gaulle airport..the CDG as they call it .. I was hoping to see the Eiffel Tower while the aircraft was landing but .. alas.. I could not .. In the CDG - 2F we found so many duty freeshops andevery thing was sooo expensive, I found a few french perfumes which were good. I thought I am anyway going to come back to the CDG so i wil postpone it. We were dying to have some coffee at least .. But we had indian rupees and USD , I know USD would be accepted , but we had 100$ bills and we did not know whether it would be a good thing to change 100$ for a coffee .. then we roamed around in the terminal 2F and Suresh took some pictures in his camera.
We boarded the Airfrance aircraft to Toronto after 4 hours of landing at Paris. There was a senior citizens conference or some thing in Paris for which many people came from Canada. All of them senior citizens, a senior is 60-70 years of age. Could have been better .. :-( .. do not want to say any thing more than that ! ! The flight that we boarded was supposd to take us to Toronto in 8 hours and all of it was Day Journey, There was personal TV and stereo but none of the programs were of my choice. And we were HUNGRY... and you know what, he was about to serve us .. a non veg meal. we said it was better to stay hungry than eat non veg. But he did give a few loaves of bread and jam .. Since I had slept well in the flight from Chennai to Paris, I was not even getting sleep.
Here it is , Toronto... after 8 hours of non stop travel we reached Toronto. I was expecting it to be easy at the immigration and customs. But I was concerned about whether my baggage would arrive or not... As expected, the immigration guy asked me two simple questions , and let me go off , Then I stood at the baggage claim area praying that my baggage should arrive. It did arrive. Then it was the customs woman's turn.. she grilled me with so many questions whether i brought any food, how long i was going to stay, where i was going to stay .. which languages i spoke.. whether I brought any business related material for selling in Toronto ?? and so on .. After satifactorily answering all her questions, I went out .. Suresh was already waiting there .,. he was not asked any questions.
I was sure that Sivaram would come to pick us up at the airport...I picked up the phone and talked to him on his mobile.. mama.. vacchava leda ? vacchanu mama terminal 3c deggara unnanu . .that was where even i was .. we walked almost more than a kilometer to go to his car .. an intrepid .. chevy i think ?? It took us 45 minutes to reach the hotel..." Staybridge suites " Sivaram was amazed to see the room ... but i was not .. he said we could go to a temple. Wow !! a temple .. what a way to start the stay in Toronto !! I jumped and said yes, I did have to plan how to go to the office on sunday but that could be done by suresh and even if not , i though I could do it later myself.
Had a good bath and we went to the temple. The temple had many "templets" if i am allowed to call them that ! went to each of them and .. now .. the most important thing .. food !! HUNGRY .. I said I dont care how uch it costs i want to go to indian restaurant and eat well.. by the time we left the temple it was 8 30. Siv I think was sure that we would not get any thing Indian , or even canadian for that matter at that point in time, 8 30 on a sunday night. But he could not say that to a hungry man .. So he drove me around quite a bit. we did find and indian restaurant but it was closed. So we went to into another restaurant, looked like a very posh and expensive one, "Swiss Chalet" was its name. The menu card had nothing interesting except for some fries, I ordered fries, he ate chicken , we had a chocolate drink at the of it, bill was just 25 .. He dropped me back at the hotel and left ..
That was the journey from the HAL Airport, Bangalore to the Staybridge suites , Toronto.
