Arriving to India

When arriving to India I like leaving the plane and making my way through the airport with the song Chaiyya Chaiyya on my ears. This song stands very much for India and the very different sounds, smells, style and culture. In a simple and superficial way it still fits a blurred and kind of romantic picture I (still) have in mind of India. If you give it a second thought some might say that the song sounds far too mysterical and bewitched instead of crowded, dusty, humid and dirty, but I guess that depends very much on your current mood-

I first noticed the song as part of the Soundtrack from the movie “Inside man” long before I visited India for the first time, but I remembered the song when I was in India the first time, and now I like to listen to it from time to time when exploring something new or just standing still in the middle of a Indian scene and thinking about everything around me-

Depending on your time of arrival to the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport [“BOM”] you can make it out of the plane, all the way through the airport and - if you are lucky - you can even pass immigrations within these 6 minutes of the song.

After that you will need strong nerves when you reach the luggage claim-

First of all it takes quite a while till the belt starts delivering bags. This of cause means that while you are waiting all the passengers you left behind you so far will catch up and assemble around the luggage carrousel now. Most of them will take a trolley first and then try to get the trolley as well as themselves as close to the conveyor belt as even possible.

As soon as the whole length of the belt is occupied all others will still try to get to the belt with their trolleys so that everyone gets blocked here-

You should keep this picture in mind, cause this early impression of Indian behavior can help you to understand traffic in Mumbai very good as well. (Maybe the picture is not the best one to illustrate the situation, as it was taken after a Lufthansa flight from Germany- the percentage of Indians on the flight is much higher when coming through a hub like Dubai. This will be reflected in the chaos around the luggage claim then.)

After passing this obstacle there a just a very few left:

• Customs, where your luggage might get screened again,
• Another one of the many guys from security that will check your passport and immigration stamp just one more time,
• the final passport check where the small segment of the immigration form gets collected, that was left in your passport earlier (you should fill out this one, even if it looks like it was for internal use only)

And finally you are free to leave the airport into the oppressive heat and humidity of Mumbai which is clearly much worse than the impression of oppressive heat and humidity you got first, when you left the plane to the gangway :-)

Hopefully, a driver was organized to pick you up in advance- Welcome to India!

cmos.