I tried to post a day 2 entry from my Treo at Mumbai Airport, but I fumble-fingered the UI and deleted all my typing, so I gave up.

On Monday night I flew from London to Mumbai on Jet Airways. The service was superb: far, far better than on British Airways the night before. Unfortunately the guy sitting next to me was a fidgeter, and my sleep was occasional and fitful. Dawn over Iran was cloudy, but I got a wonderful view (and some pictures) of the bleak landscape in southeast Iran and western Pakistan: brutally bleak, a uniform dusty off-white with only brilliant white salt flats providing relief. And then after we reached the coast we vectored inland, over Karachi, and well to the east before heading south to Mumbai.

I arrived at the rather shabby 1960s-vintage international terminal, endured the bureaucratic tedium of immigration (there always seems to be one more form, or one more signature), rechecked bags for the connecting flight, and took the shuttle bus to the new domestic terminal. Here I made a mistake: I assumed that there would be services (ATM, food, shops) on the far side of the security barrier. Wrong: there was nothing. It was more like a bright airy modern bus station; lots of seats, and TVs, but no services and (apparently) no way back to the rest of the terminal. Without Indian money or liquids, I was stuck for four hours. I dozed, watched TV uncomprehendingly*, and eventually my flight was called.

[Need to speed this up – I have to unplug in 10 minutes.]

The flight to Pune was short and sweet (complimentary fresh lime juice), my bag appeared on cue, and the car to take me and two other passengers to the hotel was there. The journey… well, it was an eye-opener, as in eyeball to eyeball with a cow in the middle of the road. The roads were very bumpy (exacerbated by recent heavy rains), and the traffic was chaotic – but everything kept moving, and we got to the hotel.

At this point I should describe my first dinner in India. Sorry, no – I was falling asleep on my feet, so after a couple of phone calls I just drank a litre of water, fell into bed and slept for 11 hours.

So now I’m at the Pune office of Storability, the company that came to Sun by way of the StorageTek deal. I’ve cleared my email backlog, met a number of the staff, and had a delicious lunch at a nearby restaurant. I’m now preparing to head back to the city to check in to a different hotel, which is supposed to have much better connectivity.

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*The bilingual aspect of Indian communications is oddly confusing. On the TV, they kept putting up “News Flash” in English, followed by the headline in Hindi. It wasn’t until I reached my hotel room and turned on the BBC World News that I learned that a government minister in Indian-administered Kashmir had been assassinated in his home by an Islamist gunman.

Flew BOS-LHR last night on a 100 percent full BA 777. The bad: a middle seat. The good: World Traveller Plus. We reached the Heathrow area 20 min early, the sat in the Ockham hold for 25 minutes because of fog. We were lucky to get in: visibility was around zero.
Eventually I got my bag, picked up a rental car, and drove down to Woking for meetings with StorageTek UK. I felt they went very well. Late in the afternoon I returned to Heathrow and checked in for my Jet Airways flight to Mumbai. I managed to get a window seat, because I want to see dawn over Iran.
And finally I had a hot meal (having missed breakfast, and having had sandwiches for lunch). I’m now waiting to board, composing this on my Treo.

After yesterday’s high-stress, today is tranquil. (Apart from the constant rain, of course.) I have my tickets, my passport, my visa. There was one moment of concern when I found that I had paper tickets for all six of the Jet Airways flights but only one of the three British Airways segments. A quick phone call from Susan sorted it out: all of the BA flights are e-ticket, so the extra flight coupon was a mistake.

So now I simply have to pack (thanks for the dress code suggestions), watch the Chinese GP, polish my slides one more time, and go. Next stop LHR…. (Which will be a good place to fix 53J, come to think of it.)

Itinerary seems OK now… all hotel reservations are confirmed… and I remembered to call my credit card issuer to alert them to my travel plans, so that their fraud detection system doesn’t have a conniption. I’ve sent out copies of my slides for various presentations that I’m giving (though I’m not quite finished with one of them). I still haven’t tracked down available WiFi hotspots in BOM, where I have two lengthy layovers. (The map at USAtoday/Jwire is less than helpful…) I’ve booked a ride to BOS on Sunday. All that’s [still] missing is my passport with the visa for India, without which all of this is pointless. Time to nag the visa agents again….

[UPDATE] Hmmm. It seems that the visa process is less deterministic and transparent than I had thought. I sent all my paperwork to the visa agents in California; they then sent the paperwork to the Consulate General in New York (which I could have done), and the CG is supposed to express-mail the documents directly to me. And there’s no obvious way to check on progress. (I have a tracking number, but USPS knows nothing of it.) Had I known all of this, I’d have been tempted to take a day off and scoot down to New York to take care of it in person. As it is, I shall just have to wait. Patiently. And. Hope.

(I’d assumed that this visa agent thing was a bit like buying a new car, when the dealer employs a “runner” to get the paperwork through the Registry of Motor Vehicles. I thought I was paying for someone to drop off the application at the CG in person, and pick up the completed paperwork when it was ready. I guess I’m naive.)

Web sources on business dress code in India are ambivalent, not to say downright contradictory. I think I’m meeting customers on only one day; the rest is geek-to-geek, or geek-to-executive. Will business casual be OK, or do I need to take some extra dress shirts and ties? (Or shall I pull a JG and just wear Duke and Jini shirts?) I assume T-shirts and cargo pants will be OK for travel days….

For some reason known only to the travel agency bozos, my itinerary came unravelled and had has to be re-woven. Naturally while this was happening one of the key flights became full, with awkward knock-on effects. As Susan was patiently fixing things, I noticed that on one flight my seat had changed: I was now in 53J in a British Airways 747-400. I checked in at SeatGuru (an essential resource) and confirmed my fears: this is a window seat in the very last row, right in front of the toilets (i.e. noisy and potentially smelly), and with limited recline. That’s no way to spend nearly 10 hours. Fortunately this flight is in a couple of weeks; I should have time to change it….