Hate it or tolerate it, there's just no avoiding using India's premier aviation hub. Bharati Motwani attempts to make sense of this gateway's madness and mayhem by listing what to expect and yes, even what to enjoy.
Nobody comes to India expecting sanitised Singapore or plush Dubai, but it would help, if, just as you stepped off the plane at Delhi, they handed you a little note that said: “Your time starts – NOW!!!”.
Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI) is the Great Indian Experience rushing up to greet you before you can even adjust your watches and sensibilities. It’s everything that India is – bursting at the seams, incomprehensible, rattling and crumbling, but still miraculously functional, on the sheer power of prayer and good karma.
In fact, the experience often begins even before you touch down, when you could find yourself hovering over Delhi for an hour or sometimes two, burning up a few hundred gallons of aviation fuel, possibly missing your connecting flight while you wait for permission to land. If the ATC (Air Traffic Control) can’t find you a free runway slot – a not unknown occurrence – well, then you may just find yourself in Jaipur instead, spending an unscheduled night there.
So if you’re the obsessive-compulsive type who plans their trip down to the bell-boys’ tip, well then IGI, as the airport is affectionately called, offers you many opportunities to take your pathology to an entirely new level.
Every now and then there are news reports about IGI, containing phrases like “a disaster waiting to happen” and “miraculous escape”. Intrepid aviation ministers happily announce new services long before infrastructure is in place; and flocks of planes whiz in and out of overcrowded IGI, blithely grazing past each other, as near-hysterical ATC staff gnaw their radio-sets in terror. Then there are the resident jackals and feral cats of IGI who occasionally wander into the terminals, or bring planes to a screeching halt on the runways.
Here’s what to expect, what to arm yourself against, what to absorb and enjoy.
Queues, queues, queues
Of course, you could escape with only minor injuries like bruised shins as you get bumped from behind by loaded luggage carts wielded by excited passengers impatiently nudging up the serpentine queues.
There are queues to enter or leave the airport because there aren’t enough doorways. Queues for the X-ray machines because at any given time only two out of 10 will work. Queues for the loo for those brave enough to use them. Even after you board, your aircraft will stand in queue on the runway until ATC clearance. There are queues for practically everything down to a cup of coffee, except for one problematic detail: people tend to prefer a friendly jostling crowd rather than a boring queue. It’s a cultural thing. So pack shin-guards, P-Mate and cultivate a love for fellow humans.
Everyone’s a VIP
If you’re a diplomat accustomed to airport privileges, be prepared to share those with scruffy white backpackers who boldly stroll into lines meant for diplomatic passport holders, having quickly absorbed the core Indian philosophy of “everything goes”, and who anyway see themselves as bona fide ambassadors of World Peace and Understanding.
Shopping, what shopping?
If airports across the world are basically malls for shopping and leisure, planes arriving and leaving, being only incidental, IGI has steadfastly refused to succumb to such immoral consumerism. There are only a few small and dusty Duty Free shops where a couple of assistants reluctantly part with their wares. This being India, you can’t spend Indian rupees, but dollars and pounds are welcome (go figure!). There are no bookshops or newsstands on the airside, so come armed, or join in that wonderfully absorbing Indian pastime – staring at people.
Shuttle disservice
If you have an onward flight and need to transfer, the Domestic and International Terminals are only 6km apart. However, you need to allocate at least 40 minutes to physically get from one terminal to the other. There is supposed to be a free shuttle bus between T1 and T2, but it runs only once per hour during the peak hours (“peak hours” can often stretch to 12 hours a day for domestic and 12 hours at night for international once delays, chartered flights and VIP movement are factored in).
Instant India
At peak hours, India’s teeming millions tend to teem at IGI, and it's hard to find a patch of floor to sit on, never mind a seat. This is the time when you can plug into the pulse of India, as all around you passengers heatedly share their travel woes and the fickle politics that cause them – the ever-wider opening skies squeezing into small, outdated airports, ministerial visions that are blind to ground realities.
Socialism, alive and well
Outside the Communist-ruled states, IGI is also India’s last bastion of its socialist past – it has a powerful and belligerent employees’ trade union that regularly strikes work at the merest suggestion of modernisation/privatisation or any such undeserved slight. So overflowing toilets, pilots on mass leave and militant stewardesses are all in a day’s work on a strike day at IGI.
On the plus side, there are armies of friendly airport staff at your disposal, because they are government employees and hence unsackable.
Smile, you’re on display
If you are the shy, sensitive sort who spends hours talking to your shrink about your mum being mean to you as a child, IGI might be just the thing for you by way of shock therapy. For as you exit, you could suddenly find yourself the focus of a hundred pairs of eyes looking at you the way a sponge looks at water, noting every tiny detail.
The reason is only that the arrival display board is never updated, so the waiting crowd is merely trying to decipher what flight has landed by trying to figure out your nationality or see the label on your baggage.
Rich in soul
Reams have been written about IGI’s murderous taxi-drivers and rapacious touts. But the other side of the story is the poor taxi-wallahs, who, thanks to their bad reputations, have to deal with suspicious and stingy passengers on the offensive.
IGI, like India, is not the place to seek soulless structure. It’s where you’ll find rose petals strewn at your feet as a pilgrimage party departs, khadi-clad politicians with gun-toting guards, jet-setting godmen and their white-clad entourages, a whole village clan bearing garlands to receive a returning son, wizened old matriarchs in pristine white sarees praying fervently as they board their first flight. These are sights to be savoured, because IGI, like India, is poised for change. It will not be long before its unique quirks are a thing of the past, and it will be just another modern airport, indistinguishable from others elsewhere in the world.
