Flying into Bengaluru

For frequent visitors, flying into Bengaluru International Airport can be slightly disorienting if you havent been keeping yourself updated on current affairs, happenings and things. If you are one of those who reads the newspaper everyday, or watches the news on TV regularly or, if you happen to be an online person and shun both of the aforementioned media and keep yourself updated peering at blogs/news sites/etc online, then you would know. But if you are one of those who do none of the above and are blissfully unaware of the happenings happening around you, then you will be quite baffled if you fly into Bengaluru today. For, sometime during the last month or so, while you were sleeping, they went and shifted the airport. They took it from where it was, bang in the middle of the city and placed it in the middle of nowhere halfway to the city of Hyderabad.

So as you come in to land, theres none of the familiar landmarks, buildings, roads etc coming up at you. Instead theres open land. Thousands of open land all around with a road snaking off somewhere into the distance. Then you land, and as you are parked you notice theres enough space to park thousands of planes. Theres many many aerobridges. Walking into the terminal, theres lots of space. Its a good feeling. Big helpful signs everywhere and the help counters helpfully informing you of the taxi service and the bus service that will take you into the city. You also have the third option of taking a cab to Hyderabad and taking an overnight train from there into the city.

Coming out of the airport, the first thing you see is a suitcase. It is a BIG suitcase. Big like in Really Very Big. Its like a building standing there in front of you. Its the kind of suitcase you would pack if you knew you were going to be going away somewhere for the rest of your life. And taking your entire family, friends and other animals along. And you would still have space left over to pack gifts for all the people in the next town you were going to go to.

The buses are well organized. You have the airconditioned ones and the non-airconditioned ones - all taking you to various parts of the city. So all you need to do is get on and doze off for the next couple of hours until you reach wherever you need to get off. Of course if you are going straight to Electronics City, you might be better off flying to Chennai and driving down from there.

Coming back to that big bag, for sure this is one bag that will never get lost on the flight. It may get intentionally abandoned though - thats probably what happened to this one.. someone getting off a flight probably had to leave it outside the airport because no cab or bus would take it on....