(field notes from a holiday in Kuwait)
And so the holdiays begin. Over the past 32 hours, I’ve had a total of four hours of sleep and the rest of it, either flying or eating something. To put it tersely, I’m knackered.
It began right from my hurried taxi ride at 5pm on Friday, wherein I ended up paying the princely sum of 450 for a mere 30 Kms to the Mangalore domestic airport. You see, guys like me (who look more like Martians than Kannadigas) it’s very easy for the taxi guys to rip us off. You reach the taxi stand, where a paan chewing mundu (apologies for the poor stereotyping) awaits your arrival gleefully. “Boss airport jaana hai,” I said half-panting. And without realizing, I added in the dreaded word, “jaldi”. At that moment I had entered the seller’s market of taxis. Immediately, the price was quoted. I mumbled a meek protest, completely aware that my lateness was obvious on my face, which pretty much meant that he could grin his way around my protests. He ranted away about how it was not upto him to decide the rates, “road bad, traffic bad, time bad”. I pictured a new version of the stock market, with rates being decided not just by angry truck drivers but also the number of potholes alongwith any cows, buffalos crossing the road. Some kick-ass fuzzy logic I’m sure. Nevertheless, I had to consent.
An hour and a half later I found myself on board IT-3144 to Mumbai (via Cochin) and for the first time realized, that there was only one difference between the aircraft that KingFisher uses in this sector and the medium distance buses that operate out of Mangalore. The airplanes have air conditioning and pretty girls in short red dresses. (not that the buses don’t have women in red dresses occasionally, but as far as pretty is concerned…well…)
Apart from that, the seating itself is so cramped, I half expected a 21” TV to pop down from the oxygen mask location and start playing some obscure kannada movie, just so the whole Mangalore to Manipal bus experience could be thoroughly replicated.
Reached Bombay at around 10:40pm. Managed to catch one of the Domestic to International terminal shuttle buses. This is one of those buses that run inside the runway area between the domestic and international terminals.
More boring ticketing and formalities later, I reach the waiting lounge, a few hours prior to boarding a Jazeera Airways flight to Kuwait. To be precise, I had around 3 and a half hours with a host of opportunities ahead of me. Food, duty free, still more food, and of course booze. Since I was about to enter a country with a prohibition law tougher than my self-made bread toasts, I decided to go for the last option first. Lo and behold, there lay the IIFA café. For the uninitiated, IIFA stands for International Indian Film Academy (known best for their fancy awards ceremonies in far of lands…actually I think that’s the only time we hear of them). In true metropolitan style, it had good ambience, a sense of class, and a menu where the cheapest drink could pay for a month’s education for an underprivileged kid. Still, I decided to indulge and ordered a KF draught (pronounced Draft btw…NOT ‘drawt’). Chatted up Marselos (not sure of the spelling), a French dude, on his way back to Paris after having lived in Mumbai for two months. Funny thing was, he said Paris was a lot like Mumbai. Go figure!
As it turned out, I managed to nurse a 500ml beer can for close to two hours, by which time it was almost time for my flight. I paid the bill, left a generous tip and walked off to board flight J9-607.
That was pretty much the journey of it all. Slept most of that flight. Didn’t even have a window seat to enjoy the view. For those who’ve never seen a middle-east country from the plane, it looks like this
Once in Kuwait, I was met by a beaming father and an almost hysterical mother. Mom insisted on photographing me doing the lamest things, from standing like a dork holding luggage to posing in front of their new car (yes we have a corolla!!!!)
Spent the whole day with folks. Slept for a fair bit in the morning (minor jet lag). Evening time, we stepped out to explore possibilities for my new laptop. For this we visited the one mall where there was an Apple store, the Avenue Mall, popularly referred to as the IKEA mall.
Apart from scouting laptops, I bought a Sony cybershot digicam. Its pretty sleek and I hope to get shutter-crazy starting tomorrow.
plenty of other cool electronics to check out here as well including xboxes, PS3s and a 100 inch TV!!
Gorged on some lovely prawns made at home, topped off with some weird looking (and tasting) Holsten…a non-alcoholic malt beverage (I’m not sure about that cos I’m actually a wee bit buzzed right now. Maybe it’s a withdrawl symptom…I dunno)
Hope to take this travel diary further tomorrow…till then enjoy the following shot of the Kuwait Liberation Tower (taken through the car windshield)
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