Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Luggage weighing me down at Delhi international airport

I had read about Delhi airport months ago when I wanted to find out if there was a left luggage facility for me to leave my snowboard gear in. There is. It is opposite the car park at international arrivals. Its quite easy to find once you have made your way through all the taxis trying to tout their services.






Its pretty good at only 30 rupees a day and I was encouraged to see plenty of snowboards in there when I first arrived. The guys running it were also really friendly.









In my research I read other people's views on the nightmare that is Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport. There are major improvements underway at the moment. That means that at the time of writing, one of the worst international airports in the world is even worse than normal because it is in a total state of confusion. Add to this that I was the first Aerosvit passenger to purchase a ticket on the internet that needed to be issued by the service agents at Delhi airport, and my 15 hour layover quickly turned into a lot of sitting in offices, argueing and in the end it was a rather frantic affair to try and get my ticket issued before our 5am departure. My additional snowboard gear also cost me a pretty penny.

My normal bag was pretty light, well under the 20kg limit but I was given no credit for this in the calculation of my snowboard bag until I started repacking on the airport floor. Never before have I seen passengers with bags that weight 57 kgs (I thought 32 or 35 kgs was an international occupational health and safety limit) but none of the 50+ Singhs on the flights (While waiting in the service agents office I saw the passenger list) paid a cent in excess luggage charges.

Overall, it was one of my less enjoyable experiences in India, but then I don't think it fair to judge India by its airport.

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