We got up early to catch breakfast and to say thank you and goodbye to Imran Khan, who left earlier than us with part of the participants for another week of workshops and sightseeing somewhere else.
His brother Irfan took us to the Jodhpur Airport and we arrived so early that the Checkin counter was still closed. Because our luggage was a little too heavy, we put some of the heavy items in our carry on and made some last minute adjustments using the Check in scale.
A Chili roll and a slice of indian pizza later the counter opened, but now we had to get our luggage through the security check at the other end of the hall.
We thought we would not run into problems in a small airport like Jodhpur, but boy were we wrong…
Airport Personnel does not seem to know drum set parts, like foot machine or cymbals, so Johannes von Buttlar had to unpack all kinds of stuff, get his suitcase x-rayed three times until he was good to go. Immo was already standing in line and had to let people pass until the other two could catch up. When it was our turn we should put all three suitcases on the scale and ended up with 74,94 kilos, 60 grams short of the 25kg limit per piece, yes!
We thought we had tricked the system, when Immo was approached by an Air India employee, asking if this was the carry on luggage, he lifted the two pieces up and said he had to check…
Long Story short: 500 Rupies per Kilo overweight, our carry on luggage in total was 14 kilos over so Johannes Haase paid 5000 for 10 Kilos and we could continue, risking the same problem in Delhi.
In Delhi we were supposed to have two hours of time, but when we landed our time window had shrunk to a little less than an hour. We had to leave the domestic sector and walk to international departures, which was weird because we would not leave the country.
After showing our passports and boarding cards for 5-6 times, going through another security check, we finally arrived in the right terminal and boarding had not yet started, so Immo took the opportunity to buy a harddisk, as the SD Cards were all full already.
Waiting at the gate we had to get some food so the healthy stuff from the vending machine had to do, Johannes Haase also bought three bags of different nuts.
The flight to Trivandrum was supposed to take 4,5 hours and a driver from the Vedic Heritage Hotel would be there to pick us up. Well, we landed an hour later than planned and Immo’s suitcase, which was labeled as fragil would not appear on the conveyor belt at the baggage claim. We showed our baggage number to one of the employees and share enough, they had the suitcase set aside behind a door, so it would not be thrown around at the baggage claim.
Our driver was there and took us to Kovalam, where a guide was waiting at the roadside to escort us to the hotel through a labyrinth of small walkways. Luckily it was downhill when we arrived at about 00:30h rolling our luggage to our new home.
Charles, the hotel owner was waiting for us, but only whispered, to not wake up the other guests. No bars or restaurants where open anymore in Kovalam so we called it a night after a cold glass of water.