Trip to India: Travelling to Trivandrum

I woke up very early, at about 5:00 AM, in order to catch our 7:15 flight to Trivandrum. I quickly checked us all in, and we left. At the airport I had a Vada breakfast at a fast food place outside, before meeting up with my cousins again to check in. Good thing I had checked us in online, because we could almost entirely skip the line by going through the one marked "Online Check-in"! Unlike the US, the Indian airlines allow you to check bags for free as a standard feature; we checked our stuff in, and got going.
    The security line was pretty quick, and strangely enough, there was a separate line for men and women. Everyone needed to be passed over by a handheld metal detector (or whatever it was) as well as walking through the standard metal detector. Once you were cleared, your bag was stamped. It seems like Indian officials like to stamp things a lot.

The flight was very short, on a new-ish Airbus A320. It was so different being on a small aircraft, with little legroom and no inflight entertainment, knowing that I would get off in less than an hour! I guess I had gotten used to the Lufthansa long-haul Boeing 747 after only two flights! We arrived with little delay, and I stepped out into Trivandrum. I was hit by a wave of heat and humidity (but no smell of feces). I guess that is what is to be expected in a city so close to the equator. It wasn't that terrible, but it took a couple hours to get used to.
We were met with another driver in the arrivals area of the small airport, who the adults in our group again greeted very warmly while the rest of us awkwardly waited to greet him. He took us to the hotel, where they checked the underside of the car for bombs before letting us in. In front of the entrance there was a metal detector, so I was a bit confused as to why they were letting people just walk through it and set it off willy nilly.
Inside, the front desk was taking an unnecessarily long time to check our passports and OCIs, so we sat on a comfortable couch in the air conditioned lobby.

Later in the day, we met Doctorauntie at her house. We hung out in her house for a while before having dinner.

Me and my cousins talk

My uncle (who I call Ungle for some reason) and Appachan

Doctorauntie shows my father (who I call Appa) a magazine in her study

Finally, we had dinner: chicken, fish, rice, and cabbage. It was all right, though I would have preferred Basmati rice and another type of fish. The chicken and cabbage, however, were both very good. Again, I started getting terribly sleepy at around 7:00, so I was relieved when the driver took us back to the hotel. After a quick shower and tooth-brushing (using bottled water supplied for free by the hotel), I quickly fell asleep.