It all started with an invite from my dear friend and business partner Aman Kumar Jain, to his wedding back in March of 2014. I have known and worked with Aman for over 6 years, and I wasn’t going to miss this important moment in his life, so I knew I had to make the journey. Just two weeks before the wedding, I was in Brazil supporting my Seleccion Colombia, at the World Cup with my Father and Brother in Law. We cut the trip short, as I had to be present for the grand day. As I sat in the car speeding down the roads of India, rushing to make the wedding in Purulia, I deiced to start writing this post as a distraction to the near collisions on every kilometer traveled.
The original plan was for me to ride in a train along with many of Aman’s friends also headed to Purulia from Kolkata, but that didn’t work out given a delayed bag. Thank you KLM Airlines, and the gift we decided to get Aman and Ashika.
Here are the details:
June 30th US Time
I arrived at the Salt Lake International Airport excited as hell for the trip. After all, I was traveling to two new places in India I had never been to before, (Kolkata and Purulia) and was about to experience my first Indian wedding.
Delta App Update: Flight to Atlanta has been delayed.
I never check bags, as it gives me more flexibility in my travels and gets me in and out of airports faster, so keeping with usual practices, I make my way through security with my roller bag and a bag containing the gift for the wedding, a very beautiful cake serving set from Tiffany & Co. that my lovely wife had bought on behalf of our family. With as much as I travel, and all the travel scars I have, I got the security thing down and 'USUALLY' fly through security, but not this time!
I got pulled to the side and asked to remove the gift box from my bag. As we opened the beautifully tied bow on the Tiffany & Co box, I realized that our gift has a knife in it. Shit! Why the heck did I not realize this sooner? I had to do what I never do; check my freaking bag!
After going through security; upset about having to check my bag, I approached the Delta counter to express my concern about the tight connection in Atlanta and not being able to make my connection to Amsterdam. The lady at the counter was freaking AMAZING, in a matter of minutes she had pulled my bag off the flight to Atlanta, booked me on a new flight through Minneapolis that would get me on the Amsterdam flight in time for my connection to Dehli.
July 2nd India Time
Flight arrived in Dehli on time and without any issues, until I reached the baggage claim section. All the bags had been pulled off the carrousel and none of the bags lying around the carousel were mine. Shit dude, what I feared the most (loosing my checked bag), was just happening.
I look towards the baggage claim counter and there is a line; wait a minute, not a line, a MOB of people hovering over the 3 representatives at the counter. People were yelling, some were crying about their bags. It was a mess! After not getting anywhere by making a line, I decided to move my cultural dial to Indian mode and I just forced my way to the front of the mob to start my baggage claim process. I was given a blank form to fill out with the details of my bag. After filing out this form, I had to fight my way back to the front of the mob, so I could turn in the form. The girl behind the counter took my form, transferred it MANUALLY, to a new form and handed it back to me as she pointed to a counter across the way; also packed with people. I had to go there to get the form stamped by customs and then bring it back.
After fighting the mob of people in the customs area, I made my way back to fight the mob of people in the bag claim area. I fought my way back to the counter, turned in the form and got back a copy of the form with a “sorry sir for the inconvenience, your bag SHOULD come in on tomorrows flight from Amsterdam”. I was like, fuck man this sucks! I had a flight in a few hours to Kolkata, where I had a hotel to shower up and sleep for several hours in preparation for a train ride to Purilia that evening. I obviously had to scratch that, as my bag was not even going to be in Dehli, not even Kolkata until the next day.
I had no other choice but to wait for the bag in Kolkata as getting a bag to Purulia would be nearly impossible. KLM told me the bag would be at the Kolkata airport for pick up the morning of the 3rd of July.
July 3rd India Time
I wake up to start dialing the Dehli KLM office for a status on my bag. I was confident my bag would be there, but to my freaking surprise, these peeps from KLM Dehli failed to throw my bag on the first flight to Kolkata on a local airline, and now they were telling me it would need to wait for an 8pm flight! I was cursing the gift, and my wife’s decision to buy this gift, which was the cause of this mess! I finally got through a manager, from whom I demanded a solution from. They had delayed my bag already once which caused me to miss one day of events.
At this point, I was like, ok, I need to go to a plan B, as I may not even get my bag at all, and I am not missing the wedding ceremony on the 4th. I took a cab to the local mall to look for clothes, as the sweats, t-shirt and tennis shoes I had on was definitely not appropriate for a wedding. I went to many shops and none of them had any clothes that would fit this 6.3’ frame. I came back to my hotel empty handed with hopes that KLM had figured something out.
The concierge at the hotel had an update for me; KLM did find an earlier flight to Kolkata that would arrive 6pm vs. the 11pm arrival they had originally proposed. I was like, Ok, that will work. I thought; once the bag arrives, I will take a car to Purilia to hopefully catch the tail end of the first day of events and be there in time for the wedding ceremony on the 4th.
My bag arrived at the hotel around 7:30pm. Yahoooooo!
In India, most of the better hotels have a security checkpoint in their entrance, much like those at the airports, where they run your bags through the scanner. My phone rings in my room and it’s the hotel security telling me they ran my bag through the scanner and they have found knives in my bag! At this point, I had forgot about the gift that had me in this situation to start with ☺ The gentleman at security was like “Sir, we will need to hold these at the front desk until you check out tomorrow.”
After two agonizing days 2 days of waiting, I changed my clothes and was on my way out the door when I got a WhatsApp message from my friend Dnaynesh telling me I should NOT travel this late as there would be risk of encountering Naxalite Rebels on the road. I was like, fuck it, I will take the risk, after all I have a set of very fine Tiffany & Co. knives I could use to defend myself ☺.
After giving it a second thought, I decided not to risk it, so I planned to leave the next day at 4am.
July 4th India Time
Wedding day! I have my bag and I am ready to go. The guys at the Lalit Grand Eastern Hotel are amazing, they gave me a wake up call followed by a cup of morning tea and the car ready to go. We started our drive around 4:30am with what we believed would be enough time to get to Purulia by 10am, just in time for the wedding at Noon.
The first 200 kilometers were quite the breeze with great scenery and lots of honking on the way ;). The planned for 4.5 hours to travel the full 300 kilometers (186 miles).
We hit a small town called Bankura and in retrospect, this is where the trip turned to hell and where the kilometers more than tripled in time! In Bankura we took the wrong turn, we went down a road that also led us to Purulia, but through roads where it seemed like land minds had gone off. All of this while it poured rain! What was supposed to be a 4.5 hour drive turned into and 8 hour drive and a race to the finish line in order to make the wedding ceremony.
When I finally arrived, I rushed out of the car and up to my hotel room to get dressed for the event. After the longest 300 kilometers ever traveled, I had SAFELY arrived and on my way to the wedding. Thankfully for me, Indian weddings have quite a bit of rituals and I arrived just in time for the procession (Baarat), where friends and family of the groom gather and dance to a live band.
I will write about the wedding experience on a separate post, but I had to get this travel experience off my chest ;)
चियर्स (Cheers)