Botany Bay? No, Bombay!

Well, Mumbai actually. Bombay is also known by the moniker Bollywood which, I gather, is Bombay Hollywood. Some time ago, several cities changed their names from the ones the British gave to them to be more Hindi.

Thus, Bombay became Mumbai. Madras became Chennai. Calcutta became Kolkata. Other places have remained the same. New Delhi (or simply Delhi, to natives) hasn't changed names. Bangalore hasn't either, although a proposed name of Bengaluru (pronounced "bung a loo roo") is in the offing.

By the way, Bangalore is actually pronounced "bang uh lore". That is, bang, rhyming with clang, sang, dang. Not rhyming with dung, hung, and clung.

I know, educated Americans, in an attempt to sound more educated, learn to pronounce their vowels more French (or perhaps Spanish). Thus, "a" is "uh', "i" is "e", "e" is "a",
"o" is pronounced the same, and so is "u". Or something like that.

A typical American pronounces "a" flat, as in "bat", "cat", and yes, "flat". It works wrong for pronouncing most names of European origin, and so often, we apply the rules for Indian places too. Except, technically, the British named Bangalore. So, there.

Anyhoo, I wanted to visit Dami. She's pretty worldly for an Indian. Grew up in Singapore. Studied in England and the US. She's had to move to India for personal reasons. So I hadn't seen her in a year, and hadn't expected to see her until she could make it back to the US.

However, once this trip was set up, I thought it might be good to make that trip.

The problem was planning. I didn't know one domestic airline from the next. With names like "Air Deccan", "Jet Airways", and "Spicejet", who knew what I was getting. The only oddly familiar airline was "Kingfisher" and mostly because it's a famous beer of India.

Kingfisher founder, Vijay Mallaya, has been compared to Richard Branson, for his outsized personality, and of course, now, for his airline.

Kingfisher is, in many respects, representative of India. India has a vast range of wealthy, from the abject poor, to the impossibly rich (OK, not Dubai rich).

By that, I mean that there are some in India, who feel that they can compete, in terms of luxury, with the best of 'em. Thus, India has some of the best hotels in the world, some of the best restaurants, some of the worst traffic. Ah, just kidding, there. (No, not really).

The airline is pretty snazzy. Each "guest" is given a little small plastic bag, something akin to what a little kid might take to school, carrying erasers, and such. The bag contains earphones (you can collect a new pair every trip!), a mint, some handi-wipes, or whatever they're called.

Each seat, even in economy, has what amounts to a "pillow" that I've only seen in Lufthansa. Basically, it's attached to the back of the head of the seat, and you can fold these "wings" out so that sidesleepers like me, can kinda get the experience of sleeping on the side (they're tiny, so it's not great).

The menu is far superior than any American version. You get a main course, plus a side dish and desert. They use real utensils, though plastic cups (tastefully red, to look like china) are used. This must be a pain to clean up.

Compare this to a typical American flight where utensil-less eating is highly sought after. Sandwiches are good for exactly that reason.

Apparently, Kingfisher is noted for the beauty of its attendants, who appear to be all women, and rather young. One guy (Indian) noted that he wanted to travel on KLM, a Malaysian airlines also noted for their selective flight attendant requirements ("ugly people need not apply").

I have to say, for major cities, neither Bangalore nor Mumbai have significant airports. There was no line (or barely any to speak of) on either leg of the flight. There actually appeared to be enough seats for everyone to sit and wait.

But wait, wait, here's the big difference. The gates aren't gates like the US.

To figure out where you fly out from, you check the departure list, which only lists flights leaving in the next hour or so. This amounts to maybe the next ten flights. It literally is one flight, then ten minutes later, another one, then twenty minutes later another.

Unlike the US, where you can do the security check anytime (sooner being better), you have to wait until about an hour before the flight to do the security check.

Typically, you send your carry-ons with you. No need to remove laptops. No need to remove shoes. Then, they wave a wand around you to check for metal. That's about it.

Oh yes. They give you what appears to be one of those identification tags. You know, the ones that sit at the counter, where you can put your address and name and affix it to your luggage?

Except, it's different in India. Once you get your carry-on checked, you need to get that ID tag stamped. They check for this stamp (or some ink) before letting you on.

Like I said, there's not exactly a gate for your airplane. More or less, there's a gate per airline, which leads you to...a bus. The bus then transports you to a plane, and you get on the plane.

Although I was planning to write about Mumbai, I think I'll talk more about planes (I'm tired, and I want to write something longer for that).

First, I want to say this. Whose idea was it that large open areas are conducive to transportation of sound by substandard speakers. In the Metro, at the airport, announcements are horrid. You simply can't understand anything. Why not have a screen that prints useful information all the time.

And that's another thing. Why do airlines insist on no information? Hello customers, we are not informing you why you're flight has been delayed over an hour. Because you don't want that information. It's just too hard to tell you.

And, how come there's never enough seats in American airports? This plane can seat 200. Hmm, there appears to be 100 seats available. Why are so many people standing?

I will say, both Germany and India have it right. India, I think, is managing, because despite the claim of a billion people, far, far, far, more Americans travel at a given airport at any time. Major cities in India still seem to only have about as many airplanes as a minor city in the US.

Um, the usual complaint about how utterly cramped planes are, how the arm-rests don't make sense at all. There's a guy sitting in the middle. There's two armrests on either side of him. Either he gets to use it or the aisle/window seat guy does, or possibly neither, if they don't want to get that up close and personal.

And of course, the usual gibberish about how electronic equipment can interfere with airline stuff (and cell phones). Mostly, they just want you to turn it off because it creates distractions for them. So why don't they just admit this, instead of feeding us this line.

Oh yes, India is also good about asking whether you have liquids or not.

I will say that perhaps some things are lax. I needed to check in some luggage. In the US, this would normally mean passing the luggage to the person behind the counter, and they'd deal with it. At Mumbai, you go over to the middle of the floor where there's an X-ray person. They check it, and once approved, They put a strap around your luggage saying it's been checked. You then take the luggage to the flight attendant.

I've mentioned before how stupid airlines are organized, right? No one knows where to stand. Nothing is at all obvious. There's no attendant out on the floor telling people what to do. Come on, folks, figure something better.

And I've always wondered how I can trust those conveyer belts. After all the work it takes to verify who you are, the way you get your luggage back is to place in on a conveyer belt. Whoever grabs it, it's theirs. It's amazing the trust involved, and how it manages to succeed.

I bought an awfully cheap suitcase (I think it was under ten bucks), which looked solid, but once I got it back, tried the combination, it failed. I figured it must not be mine. But then, I realized I had a cheap suitcase. Its brandname is not obvious. The color was right. The weight was right. I then checked the ID from the airlines. Check.

Must be mine.

Great. I may have to try 1000 combinations. At 1 combination a second, that would take some 15 minutes or more.

Luckily, I found the number within about a hundred tries. Turns out, for some odd reason, one of my digits slipped. The other two remained intact. Stupid cheap suitcase.

Oh, more about Kingfisher. You'd think you could get, y'know, beer. After all, Kingfisher is a beer company.

But no. You can't. India bans beers on domestic flights. You can't buy alcohol. You can't get it in the airports either. Basically, India has a prohibition era view of alcohol. Alcohol is bad. Alcohol leads to alcoholism. Yadda yadda.

The younger set (and the poor) don't believe this, but enough people do. Makes me a touch sad.

Hmm, oh yes, I'll tell you about my arrival in Mumbai. After suffering chills (I was not feeling well) arriving, I was told that I would have a driver pick me up. As I'll discuss later, drivers are a big deal ofr the Indian public. While drivers are quite expensive in the US, they are not in India, and there are lots and lots of drivers you can effectively hire for the whole day, at a reasonable price, provided you're American or middle to upper-middle (or upper) class.

A middle-class American, due to exchange rates, is upper class in terms of wealth, in India.

Anyway, I had to wade through a sea of people to find the driver. Then, instead of following him to his car, he tells me to sit and wait at this curb with cars going by. Apparently, I'm too good to walk. Of course, he just added an element of distraction. Now that we're separated, we have to locate each other again. Here's a man I barely looked at three minutes (he was old), and he was supposed to locate me.

The good news was that I looked foreign among lots of non-foreigners. Needless to say, many people were accosting me to accept rides.

Still, once I got in the vehicle, I wasn't sure I was in the right one. The guy's English seemed rather limited. I called my friend. She called the driver. I talked to her on his mobile. Yes, everyone (except the abject poor) has a mobile in India. Drivers, who are pretty low down on the totem pole (among those working), have mobiles.

One big difference in Mumbai was the orderly traffic. Well, compared to the madness that is Bangalore. There were hardly any motorbikes. They were no 3-wheel rickshaws (apparently, banned in South Bombay). People more or less seemed to respect the dashed lines on the road (though still less so than Americans--straddling the car across the dotted lines, a familiar scene in movies that show roads, is almost the norm in India).

Anyhoo, I'm beat.

I'll figure out more to say later.