Its time I updated my Blog, its just lying there on a server and gathering dust. So updating it now… This post might include a lot of ramblings so bear with me 🙂

Last Saturday, I made a trip back home Delhi (yippee… brrr… cold). It was a normal warm Saturday morning when I left from Hyderabad. Got a lift from my friend/flatmate Rajat till Kothaguda Junction to take the bus. Speaking of buses, Hyderabad buses remind me of the Red line buses that we used to have back in Delhi, fast and oh so dangerous. But considering the general traffic (and the traffic sense…) that prevails in the city, the buses are not so bad. So, got the 10H bus from Kothaguda which would take me directly to airport for a measly Rs. 10 (and this was the Express bus!). On the other hand, the unscrupulous auto-_wallahs_ take anywhere from Rs. 150 to 200 for the same journey depending on how naive/smart you are. A word of caution here, be it Delhi or Hyderabad or Bangalore, the auto-_wallahs_ are the same everywhere; never trust their meters and always haggle (the euphemism is bargain) with them over the asking fare. Try to come up with a fare that is at least Rs. 30-50 than what they demand and especially in Hyderabad, do not go by the meter (remember the time when Delhi auto-_wallahs_ had tampered mechanical meters and the government forced them to switch to harder-to-tamper-but-still-tampered digital meters, the same is here too).

Since the bus was fast (remember Delhi Red Line buses), I reached the airport in around half an hour. So had lots of time to spend there. Even more… when I checked my cellphone and saw an SMS sent 15 minutes back that my Go Air flight was delayed by an hour or so. T’ was a good thing that Rajat had suggested that I take a book along. And so Anton Chekov came to my rescue. Now I really admire his short stories… so spent most of the time at the airport reading the book in the lounge (what else can one do at the Hyderabad airport) After the security check we were shuttled into the ground floor lounge to… wait. Then after half an hour we were asked to go to the first floor (so why could they not tell us that before?) and made to wait. Finally after a long time (and after having harrowing thoughts about the flight being cancelled as we were made to wait without explanation), we finally boarded and left for Delhi.

Now I won’t bore you with what I did at Delhi (and IMHO that’s not so important anyway, is it?), the real ordeal was getting back at Hyderabad. Blinded by low fares and my judgement clouded with the thoughts of saving some money 🤑, I had booked an Air Deccan flight back to Hyderabad. I should have guessed that things would not go so smoothly, when the night before the departure, I got an SMS that the flight that was supposed to depart at 0820 hours would leave at 1145 hours. These Air Deccan people are quite smart IMHO, they actually forecasted the fog that would be there in the morning and so _to be safe_ delayed their morning flight! But they must have miscalculated a little bit because their aircraft failed to turn up at that time. So at 1141 hours I get an SMS that the flight is delayed and would come at 1225 hours. OK, I think remembering that last year at Bangalore the flight was delayed for 3 hours. In the end I do get to board the flight at 1235 hours and then the pilot informs us that we are 20th on the runway. Not only that, his tone seems to blame the ATC for the problems.Agreed that the flights are delayed due to fog, but if your aircraft arrived late, is it really the ATC or nature's fault? Its not that it was hovering over the airport awaiting clearance. Sitting in classic _cramped_ Air Deccan seats for over an hour and listening to "इस विमान में à¤<़्री सीटींग का आयोजन किया गया है " is not a pleasant experience by any means. Finally the flight did take off at 1345 hours after an excruciating delay.

The worst part is that I am due to go back to Delhi and come back by Air Deccan flight in March too. Damn these low fares. 🤦