OFF TO MUMBAI

March 8, 2005 9: 00 AM

Here I am sitting in the passenger lounge of ZIA International airport in Dhaka waiting for the a plane, which leaves after one and a half hour. It is really boring to wait for such a long time, when there is no internet and only one small duty-free shop to browse. The direct flight to Bombay takes only 2:40 hours flight time from Dhaka. Unfortunately it is available only twice a week. So I had to resort to this day-long endeavour involving two airlines and a 3:30 hours transit in Kolkata. Above all I am jitterish about the first flight in our national carrier. Biman's F-28 does not have a high reputation and being a small aircraft it is rather noisy and bumpy. ZIA has improved a lot since my tour to Sri Lanka last year. Human polution (sic.) mangement has improved better considering the tradition of whole family coming to Airport to see-off one individual. The check in was swift because there are more immigration counters set up. The whole process of security checking, luggage booking, boarding card issuing and immigration were done within 10 minutes. That's really great. I have seen activities of the cleaners to keep the waiting lounge clean however their cleaning methods were somewhat sloppy. Now I think I should concentrate on the training materials as I had little time to go through them. The next 3 days are packed with lots of work and no hint of any play in sight :(.

Please stay tuned for more tour blogging.