Day 1: The Longest Day

Auckland, New Zealand - Singapore - Bangalore, India

Day 1 consisted of the following:

• Leaving Auckland airport
• The plane fight to Singapore
• Singapore
• Plane flight to Bangalore
• Bangalore

Monday 9th November 2015 - 29 hour day

Leaving Auckland Airport:
Departed Auckland international airport at 1:30pm via Singapore Airlines.

Dad, Mum and Allen Rajan were at the airport to see me and Keith off.

Security at Auckland airport was very efficient.  Followed Keith into the business lounge as he is a premium member of Air New Zealand.  It was a very nice and relaxing place with great free food.

Myself and Keith leaving the Auckland Airport

The plane flight to Singapore:

When boarding the plane flight to Singapore it was definitely the largest airplane I've ever seen, two stories, 10 seats per row, I estimated there to be 500-600 people on the plane, vast majority of them being Chinese. Had an empty seat next to me and a nice lady next to that, which I had a good chat to, she even swapped seats with me when we came into land at Singapore which was great.   

Singapore airline was excellent, very nice and comfortable.  I was surprised at the large number of staff and about half of them being men, they were all very professional.  The food was reasonably good, felt very satisfied. The flight was 10 hours long which felt like an eternity.  Couldn't get any sleep on the plane, mainly just read a book and listened to a sermon which I enjoyed. 

When coming into land at Singapore and as the plane was dropping altitude I got a really bad headache, sharp pains were coming from the back of my teeth and below my ears, it was a really intense pain, felt like my head was going to explode but I couldn't do anything about it, it lasted about 30 minutes then eased  off when we landed. I guess it must have been from the altitude change.

View from the window seat on the flight to Singapore - It was -55 degrees outside

Singapore:

We arrived at Singapore at around 7pm local time, the view coming into land was great, I saw a lot of islands, green forests, long highways and large boats just sitting in the water.

When we landed we had to rush to get to the other gate as our next plane was already boarding.  We caught a shuttle bus over to another terminal.  From the small amount of what I saw of Singapore airport it appeared to be massive. When getting off the bus I felt a huge heat wave hit me, 30 degrees + super high humidity, felt like someone was blowing a hot fan into my face.

Plane flight to Bangalore:

Second plane trip was also with Singapore Airlines, heading for Bangalore, India.  It only took 4 hours.  It was a smaller plane and there were a lot of empty seats, vast majority of the passengers were Indian.  At this point I was really tired but found it very difficult to get any sleep on the plane.

Bangalore:
The airplane arrived in Bangalore, India at about 11pm local time, temperature was about 21 degrees and weather was light rain.  When we got off the plane we had to go through immigration which was very quick, the man behind the immigration desk was talking to me about the All Blacks.

Had to fill out another form for the baggage we were carrying, Keith said Indian's love to fill out forms but these hardly ever get looked at.  When picking up our main bags, I noticed the zips were partly opened but not the main zip as it had a lock on it.  Followed Keith to a money exchange desk.  It was quite informal, simply gave my passport and foreign currency (500 USD) and they counted out the Indian money, I asked for it to be in 100 rupee notes but they gave it to me in 500, it came out to be quite a large number of notes, but a quick and painless process.  I'm finally understanding the face value of the Indian money, 100 rupees are about $2.30 NZD. When going through security check none of the guards seemed to care, as Keith pointed out - this process is more for employment not really security checks.  The airport was quite empty, but it could of just been that it was late at night.

When we finally got outside the weather was raining but quite warm, not too high humidity.  A lot of emotions were running through my head and felt as if everything was very unfamiliar, which it was. My first impression was I could hear a lot of car horns, and as Keith pointed out everyone here beeps their horns for almost any reason, and if an accident occurs and you didn't beep your horn you are to blame. There was a taxi driver waiting outside for us holding a sign with our names on it. When getting into his car I realised there were no seat belts, there was the belt but no where to clip it in, Keith said its normal, but the driver had his seat belt on which I thought was a bit disconcerting. He drove what I thought was quite reckless, driving all over the road, no attention to road marking, always flashing his high beam headlights at cars, and driving very close to other cars, actually thought I was going to die, but Keith said that it is normal.

I noticed there were a huge number of very large billboards everywhere, advertising all sorts of things.  The taxi driver took us down a road that was off the main highway, it felt quite dodgy.  After about 10mins of driving from the airport we arrived at the hotel, which was reasonably nice.  Tried to have a shower but couldn’t get the shower head to work, there was only a tap that worked with a bucket under it, which was freezing cold but refreshing.

Overall I was feeling a huge number of emotions, as well as  being physically tried, feeling sick, and still having a headache.  But also feeling completely out of my comfort zone, in a totally different environment, where literally everything is different.  However I felt closer to God that ever before, I'm thankful for Keith and the Lord for keeping me safe thus far.

Tomorrow we catch a bus out to Mysore and spend a few days there. Looking forward to it.