Going Down South

After our brief stint in Delhi, we went back to the airport at a very early hour to catch a flight down to Kochi/Cochin, India. How early was it? Well, this picture was taken about an hour into the flight at cruising altitude, so there you go. Our experience at Indira Gandhi International was not much better the second time around, either. Just physically getting into the airport was met with a lot of attitude. A guard at the door looked at our tickets with the most annoying look on his face. There was actually a literal eye roll like how dare we try and enter the airport to try and catch our flight. I simply do not understand it. People at this airport treat us like we are idiots even though we are doing everything they ask of us. When in the security line, Nicole was told she was in the wrong line, (but I wasn't). Apparently there is a separate line for women than men. Why? I haven't the foggiest. At this point, I had attitude. Half of Nicole's bags were already through the x-ray machine, and I said, "Well aren't we all going to the same place?" I ask too many questions.

Then we had to put special tags on all of our carryons that were scanned. And the man looked at me like I was an idiot because I didn't know this was common practice. The purpose of these tags is not clear. Like I know it's to mark each bag as being scanned by the machine, but if you're through security, it's very clearly implied that it has been scanned. It seems very redundant. I am not sure what it is, but there is certainly a lot of attitude at the airport -- especially directed toward us, presumably due to the way we look. Perhaps this is how middle eastern people feel when dealing with TSA.

Once actually on the plane, things were fine. We flew Air India, which Nicole was a little concerned about, but we even got served breakfast during our three hour flight. A breakfast of paneer and chickpeas, but a breakfast nonetheless. We touched down around 815am and jockeyed for position to exit the plane (again, lines are a silly notion here).

It was a small airport, and since we just had carryons (all tagged naturally), we breezed through the terminal and met with Nicole's filmmaker partner in India, Uma. I awkwardly captured the moment in this bad picture. I wasn't ready and hastily fired off a shot. I will make up for it later. She had arranged a driver for us and we all went to our hotel in Thrissur, which took over an hour. The weather down here is much more humid and tropical. It also has more of a small town feel, albeit just as chaotic. There are still a lot of horns. Soon we will meet back up with Uma for lunch at her house. I'm excited. Nicole is scared. In any event, both of us are now taking Pepto Bismol on a regular basis.