Ginger Without Borders

The Tour: The world closed within months after my last post.  Now, almost four years later,  both our children have gotten married.  This tour will be shared with our daughter (the originator of this blog) and her husband.  We are visiting India, the land of his birth. 

Our tour will begin in Mumbai, where Kingston was born and his immediate family lives. We get there by flying to Dubai on Emirates Airline, which many tour magazines frequently rate as one of the best in the world.  We have traveled some US airlines in the US since the world reopened, and their magical shrinking seating areas result in a miserable experience if the trip has any length.  We debated for some time upgrading our seating plan, but Kingston persuaded us that, based on his several trips to India before Covid, coach on Emirates would be “fine.”

Day One: I started to get a little dubious when we got to the airport to find that our flight was delayed by an hour. But we did board at the revised time. Kingston had booked us seats next to the exit doors, which I usually try to avoid on US airlines. On Emirates, those seats turned out to have almost ten feet between us and the flight attendants’ jumpseats.  So plenty of leg room to stretch out and no one to bother to get to the bathroom.  That is the good life for a senior citizen! And the food was plentiful, tasty and not just western fare (since a significant number of our fellow travelers were Indian).  For the first time since I can remember, the plane was quiet enough that I did not even reach for my earplugs to sleep.  The complimentary guest packs even included socks and a toothbrush. And the flight attendants were actually helpful and friendly, so I am in full agreement with the ratings by the travel magazines.

After 11 hours, we landed in Dubai.  As my daughter explained, Dubai is a silent airport, meaning no boarding announcements are blaring in the main consourse.  You go to your gate, check in, and proceed to a lower level.  There, they make boarding announcements. The flight to Mumbai was on a smaller, older aircraft, but the flight attendants were equally nice and helpful.

The flight attendant advised us that the view of Mumbai would be spectacular as we landed, but clouds had filled the sky once we reached Mumbai.  It is monsoon season in India.  Once we were below the clouds with our descent, we passed over a very green city with low hills in the center of our view. Lots of blue tarps covered the single story cinderblock houses scattered among high-rise towers.  Kinston later told us that the 10 square mile area around the airport (where his family’s building is located) has a ten story height limit.

We had expected (based on our previous immigration experiences) to spend some time clearing immigration.  However, unlike the US, all the stations were manned by agents, and we literally walked up to a station.  And my first benefit of reaching age 70 was that I did not have to be photographed and fingerprint scanned.  Lena and Dawn did.  We cleared immigration in record time, and our bags were already on the luggage carousel.  We were out of the airport in record time!

It was about 3pm when Kingston’s brother helped us load our ten bags of luggage in the back of his Suzuki minivan.  Covid had prevented Kingston from visiting his family for almost five years so he had a lot of presents to pack.  The weather was warm, not as hot as the US we left and there was a nice breeze.  As we expected, the road to the hotel was crowded with small cars and trucks, tons of three wheeled gas-powered rickshaws, and lots of pedestrians.

The hotel was surrounded by a 10 foot wall and a gate blocked the entrance manned by security guards.  They opened the back of the van to scan the luggage and inspected the underside of the van with a mirror.  A luggage scanner was set up in front of the entrance and after the bags were inspected, staff delivered them to our room.  We were wanded individually before we could enter the front doors.  I guessed the procedures were a hangover from the recent G20 Conference in Mumbai, but Kingston said they had been in place since the terrorist attack on the Taj Hotel in 2008. The hotel reception folks upgraded us, and we quickly freshened up before heading back to the van to go see Kingston’s family.  As soon as we stepped through the front doors to board the van, the bottom fell out of the sky in buckets of rain. It is monsoon season.

The rain storm passed on the 15-minute drive to the high-rise compound where his family lives. His family was excited to see Kingston in person (and not on a screen), particularly his 2 young neices and 2 young nephews.  We ate a light dinner while two more rainstorms refreshed the night air. About 7 pm, his father asked me to join him on a walking tour of the area.

His father has some English and I have no Hindi, but I followed him as we walked around the fenced-in courtyard for the two building complex and he visited with a couple of his neighors who were likewise strolling the courtyard.  Even though the dark of night was falling, we then headed out into the now mostly empty street.  We walked past numerous fenced-in towers until we came to a well maintained municipal garden park where lots of folks were strolling the paved paths or sitting at the numerous benches. Kingston’s father said the area had been mostly a Catholic area when he and his wife settled there (this was their third residence in the area), but now it was very diverse.  With all the rain since we arrived, the humidity had steadily increased and become more noticeable.  Most folks, his father said, don’t eat until after 8 pm, so while we walked, the smell of cooking became stronger. As for me, it was now almost 24 hours since we woke up to catch the airplane, and my 6 hours of sleep were showing.  Dawn had slept a few hours, as did Kingston.  Lena had slept none at all.  I hardly remember when my head hit the pillow.