Chpt 3. Rock on!

8th August

We were to take the 17.30 Indigo flight [Blr-Delhi] and meet Vash there. We’d coincided our flight arrivals so as to minimize waiting times at the Delhi airport. As plans stood, Vash would reach Delhi an hour before us and together we would proceed to Khelgaon [the first day of our trip being in the relative comfort of the Vash’s company guesthouse, a perk that Vash enjoyed, thanks to her UTI job].

The struggle of the last few days for me was to ensure that I travel light. Numerous lists of all possible things that I would need were made. Wollens sorted. Clothes meticulously planned taking into consideration their weight, the rain [hence, more changes], the 12 days and all our modes of travel. Finally, I managed to bundle everything into a backpack, a rolly backpack and a sling bag. Phew! I could manage them all, thankfully without any porter.

This was my first travel from the new international airport and I decided to take a Vayu Vajra, the fancy Volvo transit bus to the airport. The previous day I literally had to hunt to locate the stop point near my place. I took an early Vayu Vajra, meaning to reach the airport well before my scheduled check-in time as I was unsure of the travel time. Having being warned that these buses sometimes don’t stop, I tracked down the driver’s number from the control room and called him when it was time for the bus to reach my point. Luckily, all was well, the bus was only late by a few minutes and I enjoyed the comfortable bus ride to the airport. I do recommend it.

Vidya also reached a little later and we decided to explore the new airport. We found that it was not yet upto the mark compared to airports in international cities that we’d seen but awesome for Bangalore, considering the sad bus-station like HAL one that we earlier had. Our flight was more or less on time and we reached Delhi at about 8 pm, waiting to see Vash. As luck would have it, her flight was terribly delayed due to the rains in Goa/ Bombay and she landed more than an hour later than we had. We took a prepaid taxi from the airport and by the time, we reached the guesthouse in Khelgaon, it was well past 10.30 pm. We finally settled into what might be the last comfortable surroundings for a long time and called it a night around midnight.