KASHMIR TO KERALA

I begin the journey from Kashmir, the northernmost state in India, to Kerala, its most southerly state. The trip starts at SXR where (after the tightest airport security one has ever witnessed) I meet up with John, winner of the 1st Global Snowboard Marathon held at Gulmarg. Here he displays the trophy clinched by mostly straightlining Affarwat top-to-bottom to earn the fastest time. A little trophy goes a long way; John ended up as an honorary guest in the First Class lounge at SXR.
Photo credit: MHIP


Snowboarding was the sole reason I had come to India; I had no travel plans beyond Gulmarg in Kashmir when I bought flight tickets and set out from home. However, on my latest visit to Srinagar there was news that my dogged pursuit of compensation from Jet Airlines (for my missing baggage) had produced an additional bonus - a R/T ticket anywhere in the country from DEL. I chose Kerala, it was about as far as one could go. (Here I am, trying to see what a little trophy can do for me - with luck (lots) it will enhance my charms).
Photo credit: John Carolin

PLANES, TRAINS, AND A WHOLE LOT OF STANDING AROUND

Assuming that all goes well I should arrive in Srinagar on 6 February 2008, but I now know better than to blindly believe that it will actually happen as planned. Everything has to go right on four separate flights to get into the end zone, and there is fog at DEL, frozen runways at SXR, and multiple baggage handlers along the way that could cause it all to go wrong. Pragmatism makes me cautiously optimistic, so I hope for the best, but plan for the worst (a bedroll and sleeping bag in carry-on for unplanned layovers).

Normally I have a "glass half-full" outlook on life, but when traveling I check the glass for leaks - delays and disruptions are a regular feature of getting from one place to another. Mother Nature, and sometimes the airline industry, are busily converting the remaining optimists. Just ask any of the 500,000 new recruits to pessimism: half a million people are stranded in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou because massive snowstorms have grounded transportation services to a halt.

I can't think of a better reason to be prepared when leaving the house, nor a better justification for that age-old mothers' admonition about going out wearing a clean pair of grundies. Bring several pairs if you're going to the airport, and don't forget to pack your Mini Motel - one of the best new travel products on the market.
Photo credit: Vincent Yu/Associated Press

MORE FUN WITH JET AIRWAYS

On the 25th December Jet Airways informs me the bag is located in DEL (Delhi) and will be shipped by air and ground for delivery on the 27th. On the 26th Jet Airways informs me the bag did not ship by air from DEL (no reason given). There will be a delay. The good news is I win 40 rupees betting against the bag being delivered as promised.
Photo credit: MHIP

JFK

An otherwise overly stressful, impossibly boring layover in Brussels is magnified when (post-boarding) the de-icing crew clips the right wing flap. It causes a two-hour delay on the tarmac. Worried passengers peer out the tiny windows at inspectors who take photographs of the damage and point fingers up into the falling snow. Major delay, no repair, we fly anyway.

The rest of the flight passes without incident, but when I arrive at JFK I get a huge kick in the nuts: the "mishandled" luggage is no longer in New York. It has been sent to the luggage office in DEL during the previous 24 hours. I am too tired to be angry or surprised. In fact, nothing could surprise me at this point concerning Jet Airways. It has been one long clusterf*ck since I left JFK, ten days earlier.

Apparently, when I visited the lost luggage office in DEL, I triggered some kind of karmic tripwire. Despite requesting that my luggage remain in JFK, it is sent to India, and no one is there to receive it.
Photo credit: MHIP

DELHI (DEL)

I arrive at DEL on a straight-shot from SXR, gather my one bag, re-check the stamped claim forms, and set off for the lost luggage office. The line is short; I ponder what I'll do if this office has my snowboards - will I return to Srinagar, or go ahead with the booking to JFK?

Once more I describe the enormous (185cm) snowboard bag and list the contents lost on my outbound flight - Jet Airways FL 229 (JFK-BRU-DEL-SXR) 11 December 2007. Again the story how only one bag arrived with me at SXR 13 December, when the initial lost luggage claim was filed.

I hope that the bag will be found (if the bag were deemed stolen my loss would eclipse the standard compensation) but I'm not prepared for what I'm told: Instead of SXR, the missing bag was initially sent to SEA – Seattle, WA. It was discovered there and returned to Jet Airways on 13 December, where it remained the entire time I was at the Grand Hotel, resting in JFK, awaiting direction.

The bag is found but I'm torn - I want to blow a stack.
Photo credit: MHIP

SXR-DEL, PT. TWO

Departing SXR is an airport dance unlike any other: It begins as you show an onward ticket and join a long line of honking cars at the airport gate. (We skip this line, maybe because of Mr. Hassan). Next, in between the gate and the departure terminal, the taxi, the bags, the passengers and the driver are thoroughly screened. One-hundred yards further the taxi stops at the departure terminal where the entrance requires an additional screening and an onward ticket.

From there I proceed to the airline counter to check-in luggage and get a seat on the plane to Delhi (DEL). The agent finds a seat on an earlier SXR-DEL flight, and I take it. Despite that it is still too early to enter the departure lounge, so passengers must mill around in this forward lobby area. Eventually we mob up only to enter a bottleneck for screening into the departure lounge. My carry-on gets inspected well here, and immediately again thirty feet away, on the other side of the bottleneck.

All of this comes as no surprise - I had done it all 24 hours earlier and then fog cancelled the departing flight. I had also spent an hour or two in the SXR office of Mr. Vijay and his great staff, sorting out all of the official paperwork and stamps I would need to pursue my lost luggage claim in DEL. Marginal weather delayed this flight too, but it finally breaks and then (after each passenger identifies each checked bag) the luggage is loaded up, the passengers buckled in, and the plane is taxiing down the runway to Delhi.
Photo credit: MHIP

SXR-DEL & MR. HASSAN

The skies were neutral and the driver calm; I had time to reflect while I studied the streetscapes of Srinagar. This trip to the airport relaxed me. I had been along this route four times and it was becoming familiar. There was the Zero Bridge, the playing field, the university. There were the barracks. There was a sudden stop, a hitchhiker - Mr. Hassan.

Mr. Hassan of the Tourist Police was my first friend at Srinagar (SXR). He and three others, plus a driver and I, had taxied in from the airport to the Tourist Reception Center (TRC) in town after my inbound flight. At the airport there had been the press of baggage claim, plus tourist registration, and in my case the bonus of a lost luggage report. After that, new arrivals are pinched over by touts for houseboats, houseboats, houseboats and taxis. And as you leave the airport: Mr. Hassan - da mang who makes sure you get where you are going or to the TRC all in one piece.
Photo credit: MHIP

THE HOTEL GRAND MUMTAZ, PT. TWO

Departing Srinagar was proving to be as difficult as arriving had been without the luggage. Still, the cancellation of all the departure flights from SXR yielded a tasty nugget, the highlight of the trip to date: a free stay and meals at the Hotel Grand Mumtaz, Srinagar, transport included.

The Grand Mumtaz took my previous experience of comfort in Srinagar and raised it to a much higher level. I was lodged in a spacious room and ate excellent food. The shower was hot and the pressure strong. The central heat was warm and constant, the cable always worked, the power never went out. I cleaned myself up entirely. The irony was craptaculicious - I was at my Sunday best but the flu had me beat. I stay in on my last night in Srinagar.

In the morning I read the papers over breakfast and wait for the taxi to SXR. It was unclear if planes were flying and the weather looked dubious. The newspaper stories were describing that seasonal fog chaos in DEL was disrupting flights and stranding passengers, so I was warily optimistic as we left the Grand Mumtaz.
Photo credit: MHIP

THE HOTEL GRAND MUMTAZ, SRINAGAR

As the taxi pulled away from the Grand Hotel & Restaurant, I believed I had not seen the last of Srinagar. It turned out I was right.

At 1130 I was handed a boarding pass for SXR to DEL from the good offices at Jet Airways. It was just the beginning: Check-out time is 1200 and the departure flight leaves at 1430. I still had to pay and tip the Grand, arrange a cab and skip to SXR, and go through the airport dance - getting processed, screened, stamped, and patted down - several times over.

We hadn't travelled twenty yards from the Grand when the cabbie was out the door and engaged in a shouting match with another driver who looked ready to slap his beard right off. I was mulling about some other way to the airport when the argument suddenly ended and we were rolling out. I stared at the cabbie and my gaze was returned by goggling saucers of magnified iris. Could glasses be that thick? He told me not to worry about anything - he had been driving a taxi for the past 55 years. (I hope he started at age 10).

We made record time to the airport. Some pedestrians in or near our path almost didn't survive. We went window-to-window with another vehicle, quickly narrowing the distance between us and a huge bull on the center line. It cooperated by staying put and we were past it and on.

There was no need to hurry - after the pat-downs, after the waiting, after five hours it was announced that all flights out of SXR were downgraded from "DELAYED" to "CANCELLED". We would all see one another at SXR again tomorrow, but for now it was back to Srinagar, to the Hotel Grand Mumtaz.
Photo credit: MHIP

HAVING FUN WITH JET AIRWAYS

On arrival at Delhi International (DEL) the transfer to the domestic terminal requires one to pick up checked bags - doesn't matter if they are checked through onward, usually. I sat by the belt until every last bag was gone and all the passengers too. Neither of my two bags appeared. But I was not worried, as I was ignorant of the facts and was only sitting there as a precaution. After all, my bags were checked through to Srinagar (SXR); I didn't know I had to pick up my bags at that point.

After check in (of your bags) at the domestic terminal all checked bags are subsequently screened and laid out on the tarmac. Passengers have to then individually identify each bag or it will not be loaded on the domestic flight. This is exactly when trouble started, when I first learned that my snowboard bag, and all my snowboard equipment, was missing. My other checked bag was there, and after being ID'd it was loaded for the flight to SXR. (I actually forfeited my connecting flight and took the next flight three hours later on the suggestion that it would give the crew time to find the missing bag).

During this bonus layover I learned that not only was my bag missing, but that the bag I did have should not have made it to the domestic terminal in any case - transfers to the domestic terminal requires the pick up of checked bags - doesn't matter if they are checked through onward. Usually. But nonetheless one of my bags was sitting there, on the tarmac. This remains a mystery that no one can explain.

I arrived in SXR on the 13th December, and I have repeatedly (every business day in Srinagar) visited the offices of Jet Airlines to inquire about my luggage. Between the parties in that office, and the Jet Airlines officials at SXR, and the Jet Airlines officials at DEL, no one can determine the whereabouts of the bag containing all of the gear I need for Gulmarg.

Sh*t! F*ck! Repeat!
Photo credit: MHIP