We flew into Mumbai airport by Jet Airways - noticing the shanty town by its side as we landed. International airports are usually a prestige monument to the host nation, but Mumbai airport fails to impress and as we transferred by bus to the domestic terminal, with closer contact to the neighbouring shanties, and the building work on the warehouses (unfinished so that cardboard packaged goods were out in the open) with women carrying building materials on their heads, the impression worsened. The domestic terminal is new but the expected electronic announcement boards were absent so that boarding was organised by announcements and rail way style destination boards at the gates - onto another bus to the plane on the tarmac.
We were met by Kaizad and one of his sons, with a cousin to drive a small and battered four-seat er into which we five and luggage were piled - seat belts ? - no! Nothing but the experience can prepare you for the horror of traffic in Ahmedabad - traffic in Palermo was peaceful and well-regulated by comparison. There is a continual beeping of horns to the extent that as a warning signal this exercise is pointless through indecipherability in the overall noise. There are no lanes marked - even in the few places where an all but indistinguishable mark exists it is ignored entirely - there is often no directional discipline, and crossing, entrances and exits are a complete free for all - with people and vehicles dashing into and across any free spaces. Bicycles, pedestrians from the fleet to almost lame, hand and horse cats, scooters and three-wheeled ''rickshaws' jostle with cars, lorries and buses, all without regard for each other. Not to mention ubiquitous dogs and the odd bullock grazing on greenery in the central reservation as additional hazards to be negotiated. No wonder the sky is filled with kites wheeling away in their dozens.
January 14th is the festival day or competition for the flying of man-made kites, when the sky becomes almost invisible with them, it is said. Remnants of unsuccessful kites are wrapped around every overhead wire and by the side of the road from the airport, boys were laying out lengths of white and fluorescent red threads on poles in preparation for the big day.
We were deposited at a small hotel. Across the road was an opulent 'Le Meridien' which we went into when ours did not know how to deal with travellers cheques. They couldn't deal with ours as we were not resident there, but phoned across the road with the necessary information and half an hour later a banker and his driver turned up so that we could perform a transaction in the hotel restaurant, sealed with a cup of tea and some social conversation.
Also across the road was a building labelled 'The Zoroastian Womens Ind. Coop' indicating the Parsee community of whom we were guests, and behind our hotel was a mosque, the PA system amplified muezzin of which woke us at dawn local time (1 am ish GMT).
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