It was for the first I was going on an official visit to another country. When I came to know that me and my team was going to China, I was excited at once. But, within a minute many questions started popping up all of a sudden. Lot’s of them. I knew a bit about China because some of my lab colleagues were from China. But, I must confess most of those assumptions were wrong.
We left from Pune to Delhi at 5 AM and reached at 7 AM. It was the first time I was visiting Delhi airport in around last 15 years. The airport is now in much much better condition than what I saw once. The interior is better also the food court is nice. Me and colleagues rushed to the food plaza to have Indian Food for last time before going to China. I was struggling with my IDEA network and its roaming fuzz. (I sometimes feel IDEA is AT&T of India) While having a stroll we stumbled upon a statue. It was of Sun god. It was interesting to see people not from India taking photos in an Indian airport!
I must put in black and white that people curse Indian airline services (Air India and Jet Airways) for international flights. But, my experience with Jet Airways and Air India is amongst the best. Even better than american ones. Given a choice I will always choose them over any others. Anyways.. The better part of choosing the Indian airline service is Food! I’m sure most of you will agree with me that, usually the food you get in flights is not the best. So why not choose the best amongst the worsts?
The best part of the journey from Delhi to Shanghai came to me as a pleasant surprise at the very end of the journey. It was Air India from Delhi to Shanghai. After all the usual end time chatter by the crew their came two words “Jai Hind” at the end. I can’t tell why and how proud it feels? But, certainly it felt good!
Finally we reached Shanghai at 9 PM. While walking towards baggage claim we stopped at one water station. It had only two options Hot and Warm instead of Hot and Cold! For the foreigners who want to travel to China there is no restriction on laptops or cameras. You don’t need to provide any documents for those. The process of immigration is hassle free. We had a cab waiting for us. We reached our hotel (Holiday Inn) and first thing we all did was connecting to the wifi. To our surprise we could connect to Google and Facebook through Hongkong servers. But, you can’t connect to Instagram and Twitter even through that.
I called home through Whatsapp (it’s available in China without any Firewalls). Now, the next big question was Dinner! I ordered veg noodles. The noodles came with only Chopsticks! There were no spoon and forks. I realized my China trip had begun.
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