AIRPORT DELIGHTS ! -NEW ZEALAND JOURNEY

BLOG POST 6

We took an Innova and reached  Rajiv Gandhi International Airport much ahead of time, 2 hrs before scheduled departure time to avoid last minute hassles

We went directly to the airport ticket counter to get a printed boarding pass and check in the luggage which would part company with us and join us in Auckland,oh what a relief to surrender the heavy bags to the airline staff I thought, only then a small hitch arose ,my check in suitcase contained my hard disc which I was instructed to keep in my hand luggage , I was frantically trying to open my suitcase one person comes running to me asking if my suitcase exceeded the prescribed weight when I said no his face lost its shine!

 So now we were left with only the hand luggage and my hand bag ,we then proceeded to the security check ,luckily the Indian government has removed the rule of filling the departure cards from July 1st  2017 which meant one lesser formality before boarding the aircraft.

Reason for removing the departure card was that its passenger details such as name, date of birth, passport number, address in India, flight number and date of boarding, is available in the system from other sources,

Then we walked to our gate, for personal security screening. We presented our passports and boarding passes. We had to remove our jackets and luckily not our shoes and placed them in a bin for scanning ,similarly all carry-on bags /purses /laptops  in tubs on the line for separate scanning, laptops separated from its case and its accessories. We  placed all our metal and electronic items (e.g., cell phones, coins, keys) into a bin.

As I went for personal body screening, my Mangalsutra as usual pinged when the electronic screening was done which I am used to but I refuse to part with it even temporarily for sentimental reasons ,we heeded to advice of always keeping our luggage with us,not making jokes about bombs, weapons, or other security threats.

After security check we settled down comfortably in our seats ,as we were packing and running around since 2 to 3 days exhaustion started setting in and we were also feeling hungry but didn’t want to eat anything as anyway we would get our dinner served in the flight, I started looking around, the flight to Singapore had a lot of rush as usual and thanks to the omnipresent cell phones we had a lot of free entertainment.

Sons and daughters obviously waiting for their parents to come to them giving explicit advices on phones and some mothers from the Indian soil now bolder that they are going to their children were complaining against their husbands who were squirming in their seats hushing them up, some pregnant women and some women carrying tiny tots who were posing mortal danger to all other passengers by running around at random ,it is very difficult to manage children in airport leave alone in long flights I thought

As the check in luggage was electronically screened for security as it goes to a holding area to be loaded on the flight, some of the passengers got their names called for baggage check manually, most of the women were in saris and some like me in kurtis and jeggings which I find comfortable while travelling .Getting bored with the long wait I started looking at the material I had collected on my lap top

 If we were taking in more than NZ$10,000 (or the equivalent in a foreign currency), we had to declare it ,I was worried about the currency we were taking and my long suffering husband caustically replied that it was rather late in the day for me to be asking that question and asked me not to worry as we were taking a minimal currency adequate for the trip as we were not planning to do much shopping

I tried to catch up with a few kiwi words

§  Kia ora – A greeting wishing good health, often used to say ‘hello’. The two words are often blended together so it’s pronounced more like kee-ora.We were to use this word through out our journey some times calling out kee ora to total strangers throwing them into utter confusion,LOL!

§  Hangi – An oven in the ground made of wood and bricks and name for the traditional maori dish cooked in this oven.

§  Kai – Food.

§  Marae – A traditional Maori meeting house.

§  Tangata whenua – People of the land (traditional people belonging to a place).

§  Iwi – People, more commonly used to mean ‘tribe’.

§  Haere Mai – Welcome. .

§  Tapu – sacred.

§  Waka – A traditional maori canoe.

§  Pākehā – European (white) settlers.

§  Koha – Donation.

§  Gradually time passed and call for boarding was done