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.

Trip to India: First Impressions

I woke up in the apartment of my grandfather (I call him Appachan) feeling quite tired, but clean, at least. After getting ready and relaxing a bit, I was immediately introduced to one of my relatives, Judgiaunty. Apparently she had been staying there overnight, so I went over to the other bedroom to meet her. It was a bit awkward, because her American English was not very good, so she found it a bit difficult to understand me, but we got some talking done. 

A little while later, I got my first true taste of India. Before lunch, we went to Thom's Cafe, an Indian equivalent of a corner store in the US, to get some random thing. I was stunned at how disorganized the roads were. Cars going every which way, not staying in their lanes, avoiding each other by mere inches. People use their horns like bicycle bells to alert others as to where they are going, rather than using the lanes for that purpose. I saw a couple cows lying down on the roadside, eating out of piles of trash, and some dogs passed out on their sides on the sidewalk. 

Thom's had an extremely strong, acrid smell (maybe bug spray, now that I think about it) which was a bit overwhelming. 

The checkout line was very different. First, a person with a handheld device would tally your purchases onto a receipt. Then you would bring the receipt to the payment desk. Finally, on the way out, a security guard would stamp your receipt to show that you have not stolen anything.

For lunch, I met up with my first cousins Aadi and Anoushka, along with a cadre of relatives I had never met (soon to become a common pattern in my stay in India). The food was very manageable; not nearly as difficult of a transition as I was told it would be. Later in the day, I was dragged to a photo frame store and a photo printing store, because we wanted to give a framed photo of our family to Doctorauntie (another relative of mine) as a present. By about 6:00 PM I was dead on my feet, and I went to sleep almost instantly after I got home.

My trip to India: The Flight

I am two days into my two-week-long trip to India (obviously not by public transit, but I decided to use this blog for this trip just because).

The Journey

It all began in SeaTac airport, where we arrived at about 11:50 AM. I was a bit worried that we would need to pay $100 for our bags to India, as the Lufthansa site said that only one 32kg bag was allowed per person, but apparently there are many exceptions to this rule. We checked our bags just fine, and got through security after a long line. While eating lunch at Wendy's, I got my first glimpse of our ride to Frankfurt.

I see the Lufthansa 747-400 taxiing to gate S15

After a short ride on the SeaTac airport people mover train, we were at the S gates, the terminal where all of the international flights originate in Seattle. I steeled myself for the worst: my recent experience with international plane travel had been not good. I remembered the 7 hour flight to Iceland, where I got practically no sleep and felt very cramped. Knowing that the flight to Frankfurt would be more than 8 hours long, followed by another 8 hour flight to Bengaluru, I was not expecting anything more than living hell. Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised!

Okay, I was lazy and forgot to take a picture of our plane. But this is generally what it looked like!

I had never been on a widebody plane since I was two years old, so the 747-400 was a great experience for me. So much space! Interestingly, the ceilings and overhead bins were very squarely shaped: no curving panels like on most planes. Some other people were having a lot of trouble closing the bins and squishing their bags in place, but we managed to snag a spot in the bins very quickly, without much trouble. I settled in, and was amazed to find out that I could stretch my legs all the way out, even with a backpack stowed below the seat in front of me! IN ECONOMY CLASS!

I fake smile for the camera before getting back to the In Flight Entertainment system

    The IFE system was excellent: the screen was extremely responsive (not the screens displayed in the picture), almost like an iPad. Nothing like the terrible, unresponsive, overheating screens on certain other airlines (cough cough, Icelandair). Everything worked very smoothly. Oh, and every passenger was handed headphones for free. There were a couple screens on the bulkhead in front of me, presumably left over from before the addition of screens at every seat, which displayed the flight info (obviously you could also see it on the screen in front of you). I settled in to watch Titanic, a movie I would highly recommend.

    In what felt like no time at all, the flight attendants came by with dinner. Compared to any other flight I had been on, it was like a gourmet meal. Chicken or pasta? they asked. I went with the pasta. It came on a tray with the food all there, no unwrapping of bags needed on the most part. There was a little bowl of salad, a hunk of bread, a small triangle of brownie with a strawberry, and a microwave bowl of pasta. The pasta was good tasting, though very unhealthy. It was basically a bunch of pasta circles embedded in a sea of cheese, with a small amount of tomato sauce added. Delicious! The salad was good too; crunchy and fairly good tasting. I liked the roll, though it was a bit tough and cold. The brownie was the best part; you can definitely go wrong with a brownie, but the one they served was moist, sweet, and (relatively) delicious. 

    After finishing Titanic, I tried to sleep for a while, with some success. After about two hours of a half-sleep, I watched Goldeneye. The two movies, plus dinner and the short nap, easily filled the eight-hour flight. I left the plane feeling pretty good, with the sense that a night had passed. After three hours of sleeping on benches at Frankfurt, our 747-8 to Bangalore arrived.

Old-livery 747-8 to Bangalore

Boarding was pretty cool; the passengers used their tickets like Oyster cards (but barcode scanned, of course) to pass through turnstiles which admitted them onto the jetway. On this flight I got quite a bit of good sleep, before having a standard Indian veg dinner. The screens on this flight were much more run-of-the-mill: low resolution and less responsive, but still better than the Icelandair system! My legs began to cramp at the end, and I realized that I had not stood up for the entire eight hour flight. 

When we arrived in Bangalore, it was two in the morning. No other planes were in sight taking off or touching down, only our behemoth 747-8 was on the tarmac. We pulled up to the gate, and I braced myself for a strong assault of the smell of crap and pollution... it wasn't there. We walked up the very standard jetway to a highly modern and clean airport. The bathrooms were spic and span, and the building was not outdated at all. The only downside was that it was pretty humid in the terminal! After a relatively short line to check our OCI cards and passports, we were in the baggage claim and soon outside. Surprisingly, it was much less humid outside than in. Again, very little smell of pollution or feces, as I was told there would be. One of the most noticeable differences was the fact that all of the cars had stickers on their fuel panels that says what fuel it takes.

Our driver pulled up, and we began driving down the highway. The highway was well-paved and orderly, especially at that time of day. Everyone was going way over the speed limit, and this is probably the reason why there were speed bumps right on the highway!

Once we pulled off the highway, the differences began. Large packs of wild dogs were roaming the streets, eating the trash piled on the roadside. The road was so cracked and bumpy that the driver had to slow to a stop almost ten times along the way. I was glad when we pulled into the gated apartment parking lot. I was ready to sleep. After riding a musical elevator three floors up, I said hi to Appachan and went to the shower. Unfortunately, it was freezing cold, because the water heater hadn't been turned on! I took a shower anyway, barely getting by. The water was metallic smelling, and the bathroom was kind of sketchy, so I quickly dried off and brushed my teeth before, exhausted after the 20 hours of flying, quickly falling asleep. 

Don't get the impression that I have been having a terrible time; in fact, I have been having quite a good time. It was just that the first night was kind of difficult and hectic. More to come!

Day 12: THE FINAL LEG! Oxnard to San Diego!

I woke up very early in the morning, excited for the day but a bit sad that the trip was ending! We called our last taxi of the trip, and rode to the train station. The Oxnard AMTRAK station had a convenient building to wait in, and we bought our tickets at a machine outside on the platform. We were about to catch the Metrolink commuter rail to Los Angeles Union Station, so we had to wait on the platform to get on the train while it made a brief stop. A short while later, the train arrived.

Oxnard platform

The brand new train rushes in to the station

New interior of the Metrolink train

It was a pretty long ride on the Ventura County Line Metrolink, so I was asleep for most of the way. Eventually, the train opened its doors at the LA Union Station platform. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to visit Los Angeles, so we took the stairs from the island platform to the underground station area. We had a quick croissant breakfast at the Starbucks, then took the stairs back up to the platform labeled by an LED dot display showing "Orange County 800 Oceanside". This train was very important. If we missed it, we would have to wait 6 hours and only get to San Diego in the evening. 800 was one of the few trains that went all the way from LA to Oceanside.

Train 800 at the Union Station

People exiting a train

Interior of an older Metrolink car
Very similar to the Sounder commuter rail, but with different pattern.

View from the train

After a relaxing 2 hour ride, train 800 pulled into Oceanside station. This was where we would transfer to the very last train of our trip: the COASTER commuter rail. But we had about an hour to wait, so we headed down to the beach. Some people were taking a surfing lesson on the cloudy day (no way would I do that!), and I used my trusty NOOK for the last time of the trip. 

Back at the station, we bought our tickets at the TVM, and (with some delays from the credit card) we got our tickets: the last of the trip. Very many people were about to board this train, so we quickly walked to the right platform. It was pretty much the standard west coast commuter rail train, with the bright blue COASTER livery.

It was another scenic ride, like countless buses and trains before in the trip. But this was the last. No more getting up early in the mornings to catch a bus to some far off place, no more Pacific Ocean scenery as a standard part of the day, no more new regions to explore but San Diego.
Getting off the train, I was greeted by a bright red San Diego Trolley car, one of the really old ones.

We walked to our very last hotel, the Holiday Inn Express Old Town. Dropping off our backpacks, we immediately came back to the station. We still had one last thing to do.
The Trolley Blue Line took us all the way to our destination all along: the Mexican border! On the train, we met a man who used to be in the Marines, and is now the owner of a business which sells home security systems.
Once we got off the trolley, we were immediately greeted by a McDonalds, and many signs indicating the walking path across the border.

A short walk, then we were told that we couldn't go any further without going into Mexico. Here we were, at the Mexican border. The end of the trip!
(Note: More pix coming soon)

Porting Over Schedules

Recently, I have been porting over my schedules to epictransitjourneys.com. Check there for everything but the Vancouver to San Diego schedule.

Day 11: Santa Maria to Oxnard, CA

Today, we woke up promptly to catch a commuter bus to Santa Barbara. I looked out of the hotel window for the last time at the tiny planes at the Santa Maria Public Airport, brushed my teeth, and set out.

Ducks walking around near a stream

City of Santa Maria

We waited in a completely unmarked parking lot right next to a baseball stadium, with a ton of commuters heading to Goleta and Santa Barbara. Epic Transit Journeys tells us to take the Goleta bus, then take another bus to Santa Barbara, but we have decided to just take the direct route.

Clean Air Express bus

The bus dropped us off at a small, (again) unmarked bus stop in Santa Barbara. We were immediately greeted with a combination of a jungle and a city, with exotic trees and plants growing in areas of the wide sidewalk.

But before exploring the city, we went straight to the fanciest IHOP restaurant I have ever visited. There was a wooden IHOP sign in the front, and inside there were glass roofs and huge windows, but most impressive of all was the gigantic tree growing right in the middle of the ring-shaped restaurant! Yep, that picture above is not from the street, but from the inside of the restaurant! The service was very quick, and the food was good.  

After breakfast we headed straight to the beach on the Waterfront Electric Shuttle, a tiny little electric bus not unlike the San Francisco cable cars in size and openness. We got off at the beautiful Santa Barbara beach.

There were a lot of garbage/recycling bins on the beach, probably from a recent party. We relaxed on the beach on the cloudy day, happy that we have all this spare time.
Eventually, we made our way off the beach and to the Metropolous Fine Foods Market. It was kind of like an upscale grocery store/deli, and they made very good soups. The most memorable part of the store was that they called their brownies "Super Fudgy Moist Brownies". Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures of it.
We took the electric shuttle back up to Downtown, and hung around Nordstrom until it was time to catch the (second) Coastal Express to Ventura. The wait for the bus was short, at a thankfully marked bus stop on the sidewalk. A crazy lady was trying to get someone to give her five dollars, so I was glad when the bus came. It was a brand-new Greyhound style MCI J4500, and I soon fell asleep in the soft, large seat. To get to our next hotel, we had to make an unexpected transfer at the Ventura TC, but the Gold Coast Transit route 6 was waiting for us.

Gold Coast Transit New Flyer C40LFR

The bus took us straight to the hotel, the Courtyard Marriott Oxnard. It was undergoing renovation, but still it was one of the more memorable hotels for me. The carpet was a bright blue color, with more brightly colored patterns on it.

The room. Notice the bright colors, soon to be taken away by the renovation.
Photo courtesy of mhnsaves.com

Our day finished with a walk along a busy highway/arterial street to a Topper's Pizza. The building was interesting, with brick walls and random street signs saying pizza related things. Topper's pizza was decent, but not one of my favorites. On the way back from Topper's, we took the (much nicer) residential route back to the hotel. After this, there was only one more day to go.

Day 10: Santa Maria layover: 4th of July!

On this day, we did not ride any transit at all. On the 4th of July, there is no bus service, so we just relaxed in Santa Maria. Since we needed to do the laundry, we walked through the park and to the laundromat.
Here are some pictures of the park:


It was very hot and we had to walk a long way, so we dropped our stuff off at the laundromat and had some ice cream at the Paleteria Linda Michoacana. It served Mexican ice cream, so the chocolate was not very good. However, the pistachio was apparently spectacular.

We had lunch at the Taco Bell nearby, then walked back to the laundromat, park, and hotel. Santa Maria turned out to be a nice little town to spend the 4th of July in, mostly thanks to it's great park right next to our hotel. We had dinner at Round Table pizza, because Marco Polo was closed.