Welcome aboard and abroad

I am in Montreal now, laying on this cozy king size bed alone, but with my laptop. I am wishing to fulfill the empty time with writing for most if not the whole of this month. I will try to make it interesting though the main motivation for this is just sharing and filling my time.

The Journey

Pune – Mumbai

Very Indian. I am saying this as now I see it’s not same here. It took me 6:30 hrs to reach Mumbai airport. That’s almost double the average time by car. PTC arranged pick and drop from me and as a shock they arranged a whole innova for single person. I will never understand how business works. Or may be hiring an innova is cheaper than I am thinking, it’s a Toyota. Picked up few friends on the way and met one at Lonavala. They acted like fuel for my confidence and also helped to make the day memorable. Drive was also good with heavy rains which is pleasure to watch from inside a car. Finally I reached Bombay airport at 11:30. I was feeling if I am late, but it turned out to be still early.

The Airport

So Mumbai Airport is crowed as any other place in India, because there is one person going and 100 to see him off and same 100 to receive him.

1.   First thing you need to do is get a trolley if you have many luggages. I don’t know why I took the trolley as I had only one big bag and that to with wheels which I dragged easily on other airports.

2.   Second you need to find out the gate for your airline. It’s written in front of each gate. There are four entry gates in Mumbai A, B, C and D. This is not the gate where your plane will stand but the gate for your check in and boarding pass. Keep your passport, tickets, insurance and invitation letter or the necessary documents handy. Enter the gate.

3.   Next step is screening. Here you need to get your check in bags screened. If they find something suspecting they will ask you to open it. If all is fine they will tag your bag as screened. This is important for check in.

4.   Now is the check in and boarding pass. It’s usually the same counter. Go to your airline counter and wait for your turn. Here you need to tell them that you want to do a through check in if you have a connecting flight to take. So they will check in your baggage from Bombay to your final destination. They will give you the boarding pass for all your flights including the connecting flights. Check the Plane no and other stuff and if in doubt ask them. In my case I had booked from Lufthansa airline but the connecting flight was operated by Air Canada. On my e-ticket it was saying Lufthansa flight no, but boarding pass had different no. I asked and they told that it’s a shared coach and Lufthansa has some reservation in it.

5.   After it’s done you need to proceed for immigration. Here as you are leaving form country of your residence they will not ask anything or only few straight things. They will stamp your passport and that’s it.

6.   Now is the final step security. Here they will check your cabin bag. They will throw anything that they feel is not as per regulations. Don’t keep any liquid/gel, knife etc in your cabin bag. That’s it.

7.   Now follow to the Gate written on your boarding pass for your flight. This is the Gate where your plane will connect. Wait and relax till boarding for your plane starts, even sleep if you wish. It’s the airlines responsibility now that you board the airline. They will wake you up if are sleeping.

It took me less than one hour for this whole process. And if it’s your first time then you now know everything. On the connecting flight you again need to find the Gate where your plane will connect, give the boarding pass and answer few question related to your travel. Go through security check again and that’s it. On your final destination you will need to go through only customs. After that claim your baggage and exit (Sortie in French).

Montreal Airport (YUL) to office to hotel

Here nothing to mention other than that everything is so much automated. The first thing I noted was not a single Horn on my whole drive till office. By the way its almost 3 days now and I have heard horn only once. For 20 minutes of parking they charged something like 12$. My manager (who came to pick me up) said if he had parked very near to airport it would had charged 35$. Anyway where he parked was also very near for me. Reached office and had introduction with everyone. Also got to know things how to reach office.  Then to hotel. All was very smooth and quick.

Airlines

From Bombay to Frankfurt I had Lufthansa Boeing 747, and from Frankfurt to Montreal it was Boeing 777.

Now I took window seat as it was my first time. But frankly its useless if its night time. And even in day time its good only for take off and landing. Rest of time you can’t see anything. There are more disadvantages of window seat then advantages.

1.   First usually the seating arrangement in airlines are 3-4-3. So you will be disturbing at least 2 persons if you wish to go anywhere. I was lucky on both the flights. In Bombay to Frankfurt I had seat beside me empty, so had to disturb only one guy, and from Frankfurt to Montreal I had all 3 mine J.

2.   Flights offer finest liquor for free. So if you are at window seat you hardly get to see the names and so hard to decide. Anyway you should get the names of few good wines for sure and ask them. Most of time they have the famous ones.

3.   And the worst part is that as you are on window seat you cant talk or flirt with  air hostesses.

The snacks were good but nothing great. Air Canada was better than Lufthansa in terms of snacks but then they were no competition when it comes to air hostesses. Lufthansa had best of them, wow German babes. Trying to adjust with what they call Jet Lag, I did not sleep whole night. But even after 3 days I feel a bit of jet lag as I am sleeping early and getting early then I usually do. They say human body can adjust 1 hr per day for the time difference, so may be it will take me 8-9 days to fully over come it.

The distance from Bombay to Frankfurt is 6565 Km. We were flying at some 867Km/hr and at a height of 35,000 feet (some 11 km).