This is a story about my last 2 hours in India. I probably should have told this story the day I arrived in Bangkok, but I was too busy kissing the ground. It’s a story of the Calcutta International Airport which just may be the most inept airport I’ve ever been through. Now first, let me say that I’m all for good airport security, even when the procedures are a bit mystifying, but trying to keep us safe is a good thing. And also let me say that all of the people I encountered in this story were kind and friendly and just doing their job as dictated by a committee of moronic bureaucrats.
I arrived at the airport with plenty of time, and in very good spirits. I am, after all, trading India for Thailand. What’s not to be happy about? I found my airline check-in counter, and after a few minutes wait, they tell me that I have to go back to the entrance and have my baggage x-rayed. Well, that could have been organized a little better. Even Indonesia manages to get everyone’s baggage x-rayed as they enter the terminal. There are two x-ray machines, one with no line, one with a long line. I go to the one with no line. Different Airline, they can’t x-ray me. My airline is the one with the long line. The line is long because one guy has to affix a cable tie to every bag that comes through, and then affix a security sticker to the cable tie. He’s obviously getting paid by the hour, so he’s in no hurry. So I finally get through the x-ray and back over to the check in line, and it goes smoothly the second time through.
Now it’s time to go through Immigration. At the start of the cue to get stamped out, an official looks at my passport and boarding pass and lets me move into the line. The line is not too long, maybe 20 or 30 people. In the middle of the line, another person checks my passport and boarding pass. I get to stay in the line because apparently I’m still the same person and on the same flight that I was a couple minutes ago when the first guy checked. Maybe he messes up sometimes and they can’t fire him because he’s civil service. I get to the head of the line, and ANOTHER person checks my passport and boarding pass. Yep, I’m still OK, so I get to go to a window and see an actual Immigration officer. I give him my passport and boarding pass. The passport is open to the page that has my visa stamp in it, because I know that it is one of two pages in the passport that he actually needs to see. The other page being my picture and info which is always at the front of a passport and pretty easy to find. He immediately closes the passport, then opens it and starts looking for my visa. After a couple minutes, he finds it (my passport is very thick with at least a hundred visas in it). He says “Ooooh, a Visa On Arrival” (see Mumbai blog post). He stamps my passport, and stamps my boarding pass in two places. I guess that’s so I can have a souvenir of the stamp after they tear off the stub of my boarding pass. I’m through Immigration, onward to security.
Now I’ve been through airport security with my camera and computer gear a LOT of times, so I sort of know the drill. The computer is going to need to come out and go through on its own. In some airports, my iPad needs to come out too, but not always. So I take my computer out of my big Cinebag backpack and put it in a tray on the conveyer. I ask if I need to take my iPad out of my small shoulder bag, the guy says no, so I put that small bag in another tray. Then the guy asks if I have any cameras in the backpack. I said “well, yes I do, it is a camera bag, after all”. He says to open it. I do and he proceeds to take out everything, cameras, lenses, chargers, batteries, literally every single item in the backpack and lumps it all into one tray. Last time I checked, x-rays went through fabric pretty well. He converted something that was neatly spaced out and easy to see on an x-ray into a huge blob of stuff that I suspect was pretty indecipherable. Then he checks my boarding pass and passport. So I sent through the metal detector, and I didn’t set it off because everything I own is in the x-ray machine. Then as I’m repacking all of said possessions, another guy comes along to check my boarding pass and passport.
I was planning on changing my remaining Indian Rupees into Thai Bhat before going to my gate, but there is no currency exchange in the Airport. There is actually NOTHING in the Airport. No cafe’s, restaurants, duty free shops, news stands, or souvenir shops to compete for the last of your Rupees. There was one food kiosk (think street food card) that I wouldn’t have patronized if I was starving. So the Rupees would have to wait for exchange in Bangkok (which turned out to be a better choice anyhow).
Now it’s time to get on the plane. They use the stampede seating method that is so widely popular in India. At the entrance to the jetway, someone is checking your passport and boarding pass. OK, you expect it here. Halfway down the jetway, another person was checking boarding passes and passports. I didn’t see that one coming. And at the doorway to the aircraft another person (not flight crew, just some other bozo), was checking boarding passes and passports. That’s three checks in 100 ft. If you’ve lost count of the boarding pass/passport inspections, let me recap for you. Line to immigration = 3, Immigration = 1, Security = 2, Boarding the plane = 3. That’s nine people that had to look at my boarding pass and passport in order to get out of India. It was worth it!
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