India Day Ten

From this point forward my account of the trip features no more fabulous wildlife encounters, and it resumes its status as a standard travelogue.

This morning I finally lost the battle to eat everything I was served, proving unequal to the massive breakfast in the outdoor restaurant area. As I’d settled my bill and packed my bags the night before, I was ready to go when the driver picked me up at 10. Farewell Bandhavgarh! What a magnificent place!

The drive back to Jabulpur was fairly uneventful. We were stopped for awhile at a railroad crossing, an interesting experience as the crossings are controlled by guys in a booth rather than automatic sensors. The road was closed for a few minutes prior to the actual arrival of the train, which I suppose was due to the potential hazards of having a traffic jam stuck on the tracks when the high-speed, non-stop train came through.

We got to the city around 1 p.m., encountering what I think was the same monkey colony I noted on the outskirts when I left town days ago. Shortly thereafter the driver left the main road and wound through back alleys and dirt tracks up a hill. I began to wonder what kind of airport might be found at the end of such a trek.

The Jabalpur airport reminded me a great deal of a bus station or maybe the main setting from the old TV movie Raid on Entebbe (only with fewer terrorists and Israeli commandos). I’d only ever been in sizeable airports before, so this was a new and not entirely welcome experience. The air in the terminal was hot, dry and still. The plane was more than an hour late, and the waiting area slowly went from deserted and silent to crowded and noisy. I had only a limited idea of what to do or where to go. My fancy new Apple watch helpfully informed me that my heart rate got up to 120 bpm sitting still, which is low intensity exercise level for me.

I was flying SpiceJet, which I’d never heard of. Their slogan: Red. Hot. Spicy. Not sure how that relates to air travel, but I figured at least with “jet” in the name that we wouldn’t be flying a propeller aircraft.

Nope. Not only was it not a jet, but all the passengers had to pile onto shuttle buses to travel from the terminal to the tarmac. The new experiences just keep coming!

Honestly it turned out to be an okay experience. The poor woman sitting next to me had a rough time of it, muttering a prayer or mantra the whole time the plane descended into Delhi. But we all made it just fine, bused once again from the plane to the same terminal where I arrived last week.

The ride from the airport to the hotel at night was surreal. It was an amazing blend of 21st century technology and ancient architecture, of high fashion billboards and people cooking food on sidewalk campfires. It reminded me a little of Syd Mead’s design work for Blade Runner.

My last hotel in India was the Ashok Country Resort, which despite its name wasn’t far from the airport. It struck me as the sort of place that had been quite luxurious when first built, though a bit decayed here and there now. The staff was very polite and helpful, and my one night there was comfortable. And it was certainly good to be back in the land of WiFi!