Day 2. Flight from Delhi to Mumbai on Kingfisher Airlines. A wonderful experience! ...Like flying Western Airlines way back when and Peter couldn't stop ogling the young "stews" who served us warm meals and chocolates. This is the entrepreneurial India... Kingfisher's owner comes on the in-seat video and you know he's in charge. Oh ...if only all of our intra India travel were to be like that first flight...but Spice Air, the discount airline that we took from Mumbai to Goa and then back to Delhi, was more like Easy Jet with a little bit of Northwest apathy/surliness thrown in. We were delayed at the Mumbai airport for 5 1/2 hours for our one hour flight to Goa which cut into our woefully short time there. And those flights were the ususal cattle calls that we are so used to in the U.S. We were very glad we weren't on the Spice Air flight from Goa to Delhi two days later when a passenger went berserk and held eveyone hostage for 6 hours on the tarmac in Delhi!
Before tackeling Mumbai, a little background on this trip might be helpful to some of you. Last June (pre-financial apocolypse) we bought an auction item at a Minnesota International Center Benefit: 9 consecutive nights at Carlson (Radisson, Park Plaza, Country Inn) properties in India. We had choices all over India and narrowed it down to Delhi, Mumbai, Goa (I knew the beaches were worth seeing) and the Golden Triangle, ending up in Agra to stay with the family of our friends Ghopal and Angeli Khanna. The rest of the trip was up to us to plan...I asked the Carlson company for a travel agent in their network who really knew India and we got Kat Parker, based in Boise Idaho, who was a tremendous help. Through her friend Ravi, we made arrangements for air travel in India as well as ground transportation and guides in the Golden triangle before going, which I am very glad we did. Hense the whirlwind tour and the 5-star accommodations, which would not necessarily be our travel mode when not on business. The properties, with the exception of the Mumbai hotel, were wonderful and we were grateful for a clean, western and quiet room each night after the sensory overload of the day.
Peter here, I feel it necessary to explain my stupified look in the above photo. You see, India has not yet moved beyond the "Coffee, tea, or me?" era of airline accommodation. They don't realize that we in the enlightened west prefer our flight attendants to be more prison-matron like in demeanor and appearance. As an interesting historical note, Ann Montgomery tells me that this photo is an example of "cupping", which was first demonstrated on network television by Mary Tyler Moore in "The Dick Van Dyke Show". You can learn something new every day!
