Change In Plans

Greetings from Kerala. We got here after spending an unexpected night in Mumbai. Fortunately, we were at a hotel which rates 11 out of 10 on the scale of our glamour-loving eight-year-old son. This short post is about our trip from Agra, the change in plans, and the hotel.

It was bound to happen that we would eventually miss a flight. In this case, I misremembered the departure time from Agra we had agreed with Indrajit (he said 7:30, I heard 8 am), we lingered far too long at a mid-point pit stop, and the traffic in Delhi was unbelievably bad. Net-net, we arrived for our 2pm flight at about 2:30pm.

We could get a later flight as far as Mumbai, but there were no later connections available to Kochi, which is another 1,500 km south. India is the 7th biggest country in the world by land mass. The next best option was to stay overnight at an airport hotel in Mumbai, and take a 5:45 am flight to Kochi the next day.

At Delhi airport we said goodbye to Indrajit, who has been our friend, companions, and guide extraordinaire for the last three weeks. We will miss him. We also thanked and said goodbye to Syndo, who has been the travel agent on the ground in India, making all of our arrangements.

When we arrived in Mumbai, we piled ourselves and our luggage into two small SUVs for the drive to the hotel. This alone was a little comical, because the hotel ended up being about 300 yards from the terminal. The drive there took all of 90 seconds. Don’t get too comfortable, kids.

The hotel is the Sahara Airport, a brand-new five-story circular building with a dome roof over the center. As we checked in, I saw our son, Zola, getting more and more excited. He has never been to Las Vegas, but he was finally seeing some Vegas-style hotel glitz.

“Dad, did you hear that they have a laser light show at 7:30, 8:30, and 9:30?”

“Yes, Zola”

“Dad, did you hear that they have ten restaurants? Dad, ten restaurants.”

“Yes, Zola.”

“Dad, did you know that there is an indoor aquarium, with sharks and everything in it?”

“Yes, Zola. Did you hear that the sharks particularly like to eat 8-year-old boys?”

When we got to the room, I thought the kid would faint from excitement. The room itself is modishly circular, with a domed ceiling (weird acoustics). We have a glass-railed balcony facing inward toward the circle of other rooms, with the restaurants and the aquarium far below. We can even watch the laser show from out there. The bathroom is glass-walled, but has a curtain that rolls down at the push of a button. There is a huge flat-screen plasma TV.

Most important, there is a big and complicated bedside touchpad, which controls everything in the room electronically. There are pre-set lighting arrangements: “dawn,” “relax,” “party.”. There are also controls for curtains, temperature, clocks in multiple time zones, do-not-disturb lights for outside the door. There is even an electronic control to open and shut the top of the garbage can.

Zola is overwhelmed by the glory of it all, and is so happy. India (the person) and I are overwhelmed by the cheesiness of it all, and can feel the decor obsolescing, the tehnology dating, and the electronic gadgets starting to malfunction. Maybe we will stay here again in 10 years, and everything will still be awesome. More likely, it will be like a time capsule of mid-noughts Indian techno-hip.

At any rate, we didn’t have much time to enjoy it. We were out the door at 4:30 am, and on a 5:45 am flight to Kerala. I bet Zola would gladly have stayed in the Sahara Airport Hotel for the next three days, until we are back in Mumbai.