A Great Big South Indian Adventure 13

The alarm went off at 4:15 am, but on the time scale for where we would finish the day it was quarter to midnight. I'd persuaded the Boys that 30 minutes from wake up to assembly was 15 minutes too many and we could leave at 4:30 instead of 4:15, hopefully gaining 30 minutes of kip.
We must have been ready to leave for home if the day before we'd spent 10 minutes discussing the next days alarm call. Anyway a shower, cup of tea were easy, plus there was a last minute change of trousers. The night before I'd laid out tight bikers jeans but putting them on remembered DVT. Then again I have heard so little of Deep Vein Thrombosis in the last decade, maybe it faded away or everyone takes precautions so it is another life threatener from history. Anyway changing trousers made the cases hard to reclose so a repack was needed.

I still had to wait 15 minutes for the others. They were presumably working on Indian or Italian time. Anyway standing in the lobby the usual feeling mixture welled from the depths, a combination of 'told you so' and 'where on earth are they, do I have the right time/day/place?'. 

There was another demand for us to pay wifi, this time from the night porter. We downright refused. I have no idea if it was a scam, or incompetent management. An argument at 4:30 does not start the day well and certainly does not leave you with an overwhelming sense of benevolence to the hotel.

Our drivers were early and efficient and had some fun on the semi-deserted streets going in to Cochin International Airport. Chris and I came up with the usual hand signals to greet Michael and Will as they passed our taxi and we passed theirs. 
It was interesting talking to Chris and getting his views on the trip. We managed to have a mini-moan about a few things but were still on a high. Looking back on it all now, it feels as though I was drugged by this time, everything was happening as if in a dream. Maybe that's what time does to memories, it dulls them into a dream. 

But we chatted and got to know each other a lot better in that ride than we had in the previous two weeks. Of course I felt the return of mild guilt as I understood more about where everyone else was coming from, rather than just thinking about me and my position. But so much of the trip was about that, getting away from MeMe.

The time seemed to pass quickly and we had enough to talk about so, did not end up in the particularly English conversational cul-de-sac of searching hard for innocuous topics to fill the silence. Our 2 hour taxi ride left us 3 hours early at the airport and we arrived as dawn was breaking.

Bags unloaded, taxis tipped. So far, so good.

Then we struck the part about not being let in.

To get into the main airport building you needed a ticket. On the way to India Emirates was so impressive, you could download your boarding pass onto your iPhone, which I loved and still had under a rarely visited part of the phone called Passbook. 
Checking in for these flights a few days before, in India, had not given us this option, so I was expecting to get the pass at the check-in desk. The check-in desk was the far side of a bloody minded soldier/bureaucrat.

Michael and Will were well prepared with lots of paperwork. Chris and I were not. The soldier at the front door pretended to consult passenger print outs, but actually put a bunch under his desk. He would not let us in. 
Presumably he was one of those who wanted to show the full power of his job by being bloody minded. Such a shame after the superb service we had experienced during the trip.

So Chris and I built up a fair line behind us as we try to talk our way through. I manage to curb my indignant temper as that would definitely not help here. We eventually went to Plan B and found out what the back-up procedure was, then walked off to the external ticket office.

Chris stopped at the manager's office, sensibly leaving my irascible self guarding the bags outside. He professionally steered through the procedural maze and got a manager to accompany us back to the obstruction at the door.

A massive new shiny airport of international standard, with a crusty old creaking bureaucracy to stifle the fun out of life. 

The helpful manager managed to find the list the guard had thrown away and there we were, clearly marked.

Battle hardened we walked into the large terminal. There were some 20 metres to the check in desks but Michael and Will were easy to spot, they were just about the only people in the departures area. 
The airport's business model was non traditional. The large space between the outside doors and the check-in desks would normally be filled with friends and finally saying goodbye. But the ad-hoc ticket check at the door meant only passengers were in the building, so the whole area was a waste of space. There were a couple of unvisited shops and a room with items of what appeared to be lost or stolen luggage sitting in small piles and as we walked in a coffee stall where Bullet Boys could regroup!
We had a coffee and Chris and I accepted the inevitable comments on our organisational ability, while I quietly fumed at the incompetence of it all.
We made it safely across no-mans-land to check in, which was a really simple procedure. We are seasoned travellers and Emirates is a seasoned airline. Plus we were so early there were no queues. Michael and Chris failed to get Will or I into business class, but they tried.
We then trekked as a group to a series of checkpoints with our carry-on luggage, which for me was my hydration pack, but the others had handbags and helmets. 

At the third passport check the next soldier/clerk in line was officiously waiting behind a console, in front of which sat some hand luggage. Being security conscious I told him there was an unclaimed bag to which the clerk said "somebody must have left it". Between the fourth and fifth stamps on our boarding passes, where the bags and passengers were screened for the first time, another mournful suitcase sat unattended as people filed by.
The bureaucracy to security ratio was the worst I have seen this side of the 1980's, when I used to get on planes with a sheath knife and you could sit with the pilot during the flight. But this was more managerial incompetence. A triumph of process over purpose.
I was actually a little nervous until we had cleared the area.

We found the Mildly Important Person lounge and surged in on Michael's out of date priority pass. Luckily no one wanted to stop us.

There was good coffee and omelettes and after we had scavenged food we repaired to the lounge room where we continued with our repertoire of obscene references and bad jokes.

The lounge was a wonderful holdover of the days of snobbery. People trying to look important while rustling through newspapers (remember them?) and getting ready to harrumph at the unseemly behaviour of four middle aged men who were not wearing ties or jackets. Although we did not mean to cause offense, we were just oblivious to our fellow travellers so yobbery met snobbery, without even noticing!

On the Dubai leg, poor Will ended up in a seat next to me. We spent most of the flight chatting and being boys. Luckily the air hostesses did not hear our compliments about them, especially their similarity to energetic actresses in short films that friends of ours had allegedly seen on the internet.
The banter was pretty incessant and at one stage Will was threatening to write a blog about sitting next to me. Luckily he fell into a brief nap before pen hit paper, or hand hit keyboard.

We disembarked pretty smartly in Dubai and had to wait while the 'front of the plane' duo finally struggled into the main area. 
Some group retail browsing degenerated into us trailing Michael who managed to lead off. Fairly soon Chris and Will got bored of waiting around and went for an international coffee. Michael finished gazing at more completely essential stuff we regrouped, again, at a coffee shop, again.
This time the large space around the back of the retail area provided enough room for Chris to provide the entertainment - a full scale reenactment of his dirt track incident, swerving around hassled airporteers on his imaginary Bullet.
The tale was no less excusable in full and graphic detail, so he stayed with the 'Dirt Track' moniker.

Will left the group first to catch his plane, carefully leaving his helmet at the table. We found it as we all got up a few minutes later and a few minutes too late to give it to Will. So Chris, as usual, stepped up to the plate and took it back to Blighty as his third item of hand baggage.
Michael and I split up on entering our Romeward plane and I managed a quiet 3 seats to myself again, even though the flight was pretty full. But the soldier training kicked in and I got a couple of hours kip scrunched up across the seats with slippery airline pillows sliding stealthily to the floor and the aisle and the seats behind.
We were tired when we met up after landing. Michael had sensibly arranged for valet parking and we called for the car as we saw our bags come off the reclaim belt. So we only had a few minutes wait in the cool Rome night air before cramming dirty bedraggled luggage into a clean Beetle. Michael drove, though he was obviously tired. The best way to spur him on was to occasionally offer to drive myself. His knuckles seemed to whiten on the wheel and another surge of adrenaline kept him going for the 3 hour trip across the mountains.
At least I stayed awake and we talked most of the way. Almost none of it was about future plans or obligations. There was no need to let reality intrude on our happy mood. 
It was 23 hours of travelling and sometime round about half-past-late when we got to my place. My daughter Steedley got up to greet Daddy. That was really good, but she had school the next day to I did not want to keep her up for too long. Michael accepted a glass of water and set off to complete his last 5 miles without major incident.

So the travelling side was done, but the memories were fresh, the blog had to be written and life had to be settled back into. 
It took a few days to worry about the little things. It has taken a few weeks to finish writing about the trip. Meanwhile the thoughts and memories have been left to season.
But those are for the epilogue.