20091018 - I arrived in Ahmedabad! Hope my baggage will soon follow…

Overall all my journey Amsterdam – Ahmedabad went quite well.

Amsterdam – London Heathrow
The flight from Amsterdam to London Heathrow was in a very small aircraft of BMI (18 rows, 3 people per row) and arrived early. As Jet Airways (airline for my flight to India) had very recently moved from Terminal 3 to Terminal 4, I found myself in Terminal 3 (as instructed at Schiphol) but could not find a Jet Airways desk. It turned out that I should be in Terminal 4 which was a 15 minutes bus ride. When I arrived in Terminal 4, the departure screens showed that the gate was closing… I started running to the gate and arrived just in time to jump into the plane.

London Heathrow – Mumbai
The flight from Mumbai was quite good. The Jet Airways plane had comfortable seats (more space than other airlines), a nice in-flight entertaining program (with touch-screens), good food and friendly personnel. The flight arrived on schedule and I felt that nothing could go wrong anymore.
While waiting for the baggage, I noticed an smarter planet commercial from IBM pass by every 5 or so commercials. Staring at this specific commercial, I started to realise that the world is not that smart yet and my baggage would not arrive…
As it had taken quite some time to wait for the baggage not to show up and then fill out all the necessary forms, I was very late again for my connecting flight to Ahmedabad. A ground stewardess showed me running the way to the bus to the domestic terminal. I could pass the queue and jump into the bus that left immediately. Again, the gate was closing and I arrived just before the doors closed.

Mumbai – Ahmedabad
The flight to Ahmedabad was relatively short. Arjun (CDC) was waiting for me and arranged a taxi for me to the hotel.

Ahmedabad
At the hotel Gavin (CDC) was waiting for me. I met Stefan, Dominik and Eva as they arrived yesterday evening already. After checking in, I went with Gavin to the mall next to the hotel to buy some necessities and a shirt/blouse that I can wear tomorrow (following the good advice of US colleagues, I travel in sweat suit). Luckily I carried the most important things (e.g. laptop, contact lenses and malaria tablets for 5 days, camera, etc) in my cabin-baggage.
In the evening, Stefan, Dominik and I went out for dinner. We found a really nice, small, Indian place close to the hotel. Ordering turned out to be difficult as we didn’t know the dishes on the menu and the waiters didn’t speak any English. But the food was really nice and spicy. I hope that tomorrow morning I will still this positive about the food in that restaurant. Time will tell…