Indore

What a day!

This morning, we left for Indore on a 6:30am flight, and after last night’s adventure with loud girls, I was looking forward to a night’s sleep, even if it was just a short one. I guess it wasn’t meant to be. After tossing and turning for nearly 2 hours, I started dozing of just to be awakened by the doorbell. I laid there wondering how wise it would be to open the front door, after midnight, in Mumbai.

Nevertheless, I decided to go look through the peep hole but didn’t see anybody. Then the phone rang. It was our landlord who kindly enough had printed out our etickets for us and wanted to make sure we had them. I found them on the outside of the door. After that, there was no going to sleep and I got up a 2:00am.

We had been advised to call a (Meru) cab to get to the airport and were told that we just needed to call about 15 minutes before we wanted to leave. When do I learn?? We called, and after the third attempt (and we were now 20 minutes later), we found out that the cab would at the soonest be there in half an hour, but the cab driver will call us to confirm when he arrived. He did call….. to get directions….in Hindi!! I neither know how to give directions to our apartment nor do I speak Hindi. So, we went downstairs to find our security guard sleeping and woke him up. We called the cab back and gave the phone to the security guard. This was a good idea, but then we ran out of minutes on the phone.

At least we made it to the airport just before 6:00am, just barely in time to check in. Everything went fine until we went through security and they found so many things wrong with our carry-on. After wanting to throw nearly everything out and the clock was nearly 6:30, someone told us we could still check in the bags. Great, we ran all the way back to the check in counter, checked in the bags and hoped and prayed they would make it. In good shape. Then we ran back to security and had to go through the whole security process again. Finally done, we ran clear across the airport to gate 11, the gate we had been told us to go to, just to find it to be the flight for Hyderabad. She told us to go back to the exact area we just came from.

After this morning workout, we made it just in time through the boarding gate, got on the bus and drove less than 100 meters to the airplane!! Never encountered anything more pointless.
Once on the plane, someone had taken my seat so I told them that it was my seat. They just looked at me and pointed to the seat in front and said I could sit there. That was it!! I told them “No! That is my seat and I want to sit there!” Perturbed they moved and I found myself nearly two hours next to a man who had no qualms about passing really stinky gas! Ugh.

After a brief stop in Bophal, we arrived in Indore and were so relieved to see our bags, even in somewhat good shape and with all our belongings in them. Then we headed outside to look for Mustakim, the son of the fabric producer we were to visit, but found no Mustakim. So we waited, and waited, while we still had no more minutes on our phone. After founding out that there were no pay phones at the airport, we borrowed a phone from a gentleman and got hold of our supervisor who told us that she was sorry but she had forgotten to call him!! She had us write down directions to his place and we were supposed to take a cab. Frustration was setting in, but nothing to do about it than to try to head out.

So, we took the cab and Indore is very different. Apart from the numerous cows and goats, we also saw wild boars, camels, and even an elephant down the street. We reached the fabric producer and he was really nice, but seemed to have no idea what we had come to do. We also quickly found out that there was going to be a significant language barrier.

He took us to a hotel so we could get rid of our bags and I have no way to describe the experience. Even though the hotel was amazingly quiet, the only rooms available were the expensive Deluxe rooms (yeah right!) and it was so incredibly dirty. The sheets had shoe prints and hair all over them, there was long, dark hair and dirt all over the floor and the toilet; oh my goodness! And surprise, surprise, the internet is not working in the room. In fact, it wasn’t working at all.

I called the front desk and told them we needed fresh sheets and some more towels. A few minutes later, 2 guys show up with two sheets and started working on Hanna’s bed. We sat on my bed watching the nearly humerous show of two guys taking 15 minutes to put one sheet on and yet leaving the dirtiest one on!! Half an hour and more explaining later, our beds were finally done. We then set out to try to clean the room with some of the sheets they had left and then headed back to the producer.

After a long day, we returned to the hotel and decided to order some coffee through room service. I ordered plain hot coffee and Hanna had a cold coffee with ice cream. What could possibly go wrong? The moment I took the lid of my coffee a stench of sour milk singed my nostrils and Hanna at this point found a hair in her coffee!! I called the front desk to make sure it was not going to be on my bill and for the next half hour, I found myself somewhere between a soap opera and insanity institution!! They had no idea what I wanted, and had no idea what “hair” meant. Really??!!! In a country with such obsession with hair, you don’t know what the word means? After several nearly funny minutes, we finally settled that I should just talk to the manager.

If that had only been it. After a few minutes, the phone rang, someone from the front desk wondering why I had not signed the bill for the coffee. This process repeated itself until I had spoken to 6 different people, none of which spoke English! Nobody seemed to understand what hair was! “Do you want to check out?” NO!!!! I just don’t want to pay for a coffee with hair in it, you know, the stuff on your head, the stuff you use shampoo for!! Sigh…….. And in the meanwhile, my throat is so sore again. The final punch came when the last guy called and was wondering if I was asking for hair removal product!

The phone finally quit ringing and we desperately needed some rest, at least, so we thought. At 11:00pm, the doorbell (yes, they had door bells on the hotel rooms) rang. It was the other manager with someone else, wondering if everything was ok. There I stood in my Betty Boop pj’s and not particularly very amused anymore, but I managed to say yes, I think I smiled and finally, they left. Then the power went out. Again.