The IPL leg! Typically us, instead of just going home we bolt on another leg. Imagine going a thousand miles for a couple of football games!? It’s an early start, leaving our safe haven for, who knows what! Needless to say Kathmandu air traffic control is still on point, and falling over, a 40 minute hold on the tarmac becomes 45 minutes more, but, engines started earlier. This is a flight which bridges a strange time zone, we are flying back in time by 15 minutes. However, Delhi air traffic control has us in a 20 minute holding pattern! The airport is pretty new, I think India got a job lot of airports from the Chinese. It’s like emerging into a Vegas mall, all the brands, all granite, glass, modern art and space.
The immigration officials have had a personality by-pass, there are two together, operating as the glums. I think my comment that we should put down anything as our hotel, “they’ll never know” has incited their inner Adolf!
Next up, trying to sort out these bloody tickets. We are both in various stages of this virus, which fills your head with the inability to think, fractious from little sleep and just, ...pants. We’d booked the tickets from South Africa, there is nothing in the Book My Show system that works for a non Indian, we don’t have an Indian mobile, for our OTP, tickets cannot be sent to our hotel, we cannot collect before 1.00pm as we are not there, and every phone call to a call centre involves geeks reading from a script. AD has had enough, “we won’t be able to go, what are we doing.....?” I’m of the opinion you can blag any old s***, God knows, I’ve seen enough people try it , so, remain optimistic as we head to Jaipur. We are on a small propellor plane, the forecast is rain and.... we are delayed by a “technical hitch”! It’s a 30 minute flight, only compounded for my need to get to a toilet very quickly, and flying through a sandstorm on our approach. In my need to find positives, our third meal in a box today, featured a Kit Kat!
We love Jaipur, quintessential India, beautiful colours, aromas, buildings... we visited a Palace on elephant back last time through. The journey, from yet another new airport, is a new Jaipur, laid out like Milton Keynes! Hospitals everywhere, lane control.....
Our hotel is a delight, a haveli, this is a courtyard far from the madding crowd, lost in time from a bygone era, a little faded at the ages but, a delight.
We are in ticket mode, AD working a contact she’s made at Rajasthan Royals while I’m using the hotel desk to work on Book My Show, thinking, an Indian, talking in Indian, to an Indian might work in our favour. 15 more traumatic, contradictory minutes later and we have a plan, to go to the ground to find people to kill!
The ground is in lock down, an outer cordon of police and an inner cordon of Bollywood extras, dressed head to toe in black, acting as security. We find the Book My Show outlet, queue and watch as people buy tickets on the door!! Aaaagh! It’s at this point some chaps push in to the front of the queue. They don’t realise that such actions involve a health warning. Rather than say,” if you knew the s*** I’ve gone through to get to this point...”, I decide to pick him up, by his collar, utter my finest Anglo Saxon, and only putting him down, once he and his mates have formed a nice, orderly, respectful line behind me. Typically, the tickets are sorted out effortlessly, in no time at all and we move away, me, fixing the chap in the queue behind me in the eye with, “they will deal with your query now, Sir”!
Off for a resuscitating cup of tea and a relaxed moment, over a discussion about, what’s all the fuss for?
We take our seats 45 minutes before the game, it’s packed, mental and party time, everyone is on their seats, singing, dancing.. this is the IPL!! They’ve dressed the ground In the Champions League style. Being India, the fences bedecked in laser printed massive images of the players, sponsors, have all fallen down due to a lack of concrete blocks, to support them, this is not a modern ground. The franchise is emerging from a two year ban for corruption and no amount of money thrown at it could make this a stadium. Were Trump to call it a “s***hole” you’d know he’d learned the art of diplomacy!
The game kicks off, every four, or six, involves hysteria, standing on your seat and going mental. Our seats are directly behind the owners section. They sit on a plinth, white leather settees, royal blue velvet thrones, all looking very awkward wearing their, one size fits all, team T-Shirt. As the celebrities arrive, the paparazzi press forward, the crowd bill and coo, Shane Warne is tiring from the many photo oops people want with him. It’s all going so well, the cricket is entertaining, as are the crowd and we are realising an ambition. Ben Stokes comes, and goes, having hit a four and a six, Jos Butter is peppering the crowd with sixes....., however, there’s distant fork lightning, growing closer, the crowd roar with each electric charge, and then, the thunder, and then,... the rain! We all surge towards a vomitory for cover, this “s***hole” has no covered stands, when the rain stops, we all surge back.. on the third occasion, we decide to call it quits and get a yuk yuk back to the hotel. If you’ve never taken a tuk tuk in the rain, where the windscreen wiper doesn’t work, you’ve not lived. Even with a clear road ahead of him the driver still feels the need to took his horn!
I’m thinking, how mental, we go though the flights from hell, the admin not far behind, to turn up for a cricket game and, in the middle of having the best time, we get pissed on! Ha!!
When Angelka muses, as we drift in to slumber, “do you think we try to do too much?”, I know that coming from a whirling dervish, this is a question that deserves my full attention, zzzzzzzz!
Thursday, one week before we get home, only six more mental tortures (flights) to go and we are having al fresco breakfast, surrounded by jacaranda, frangipani, pomegranate trees. I’m thinking of the kids from yesterday’s flight, now being disgorged at Heathrow, rocking their new found inner hippy/grunge chic, sitting in the back of their parent’s car with Mum saying, “what’s that smell?”! You know that after a trip like that, parents are now, Parents, and “don’t you know, I’ve changed!!”
We are headed for Hyderabad, another new city for us, quite techie and new. Effectively, we have our tickets, the weather forecast is grand, we’ve got lots of time built in, a day off tomorrow.. what could go wrong?