Steele Luxury Travel has set off in creating a brand new Travel Experience, the Sweet Taste of India 2012! During our site inspection in preparation for next year’s journey, we invite you to follow us through our experience in India. Check back daily for updates as we share our experience with you! Live Your Indulgence, in the colorful country of India.
Friday, October 21, 2011 – Departure to India.
Today, I woke up and said holy cow, I am going to India tonight. I went on with my day with a bit of wonder, fear and a huge amount of curiosity as to what the next 10 days has in store for me. After my haircut, a stop at Duane Reade and a deep breath, the car was waiting for my boyfriend and I, Joshua Ingaraham, downstairs. A quick 35 minutes later, we arrived at Newark airport, ready to check in for our BusinessFirst nonstop flight to Delhi. We asked the check in agent to wrap our new Rimowa luggage in plastic, as we wanted to maintain the clean look of our luggage. They already knew we were going to be high maintenance. Eyes rolled to the back of their heads when we requested hard paper tickets to be printed, as I have collected every single one of them since I was a baby. They liked us, asked for my business card, and we proceeded to the lounge.The awful newly branded United Lounge was packed— I felt as if the lounge was crowd of first and second year Lehman Brothers associates mixed with happy hour vibe at a local midtown Manhattan bar. We enjoyed their gracious offering of carrot sticks and yogurt covered raisins and decided to get the hell out of there.
Our flight was boarding. In was India in an airport—crowds pushing, babies screaming, kids playing with each other on the cold floor of the airpiort. The young Hispanic lady who was ushering the BusinessFirst guests onto the flight obviously thought she was still on her hometown street trying to break up a fight between two rivals. As we pushed to the front of the line, she yelled at us BusinessFirst only! Get to the back of the line, wait your turn. I sternly said to her, sweetie, we belong here. She said, “You gotta get yo visa checked… Go!”. She waved us away. I told her that she shouldn’t be screaming at customers and that she has to act professional. She enraged us, to the point that I went up to the Qween in the “red coat” in charge of getting the flight off the ground and had a chat with him. Apparently, all of the agents at the flight know she was a pain in the ass. We boarded the flight and got extremely comfortable in our flat beds seats for our 13-hour nonstop flight to Delhi. The crew was great; they loved us. Many came to chat with us and asked why in the world we were going to Delhi… After hearing a few stories of how awful and dirty Delhi was, the door to the plane closed. Josh and I looked at each other… We then buckled our seat belts.The flight was fantastic. Hundreds of movies to choose from on our 15” on demand TVs, more food than my stomach could handle, and our spacious lie flat pods, made for a great flight. I was pissed… By the time the pursor approached us to take our dinner order, in row 5 mind you, all of the chickens were sold out. I was forced to either have fish or Indian food on the plane. We all know fish is a no-no, so I went for the Indian. It was darn good.
Continental really needs to switch up those amenity kits they offer. Those grey zippered kits have tons of junk in them, but the plastic junk is useless and they really should switch it up at this point. We decided to stay up and take a sleeping tablet after dinner. Since the flight was scheduled to land at 8:30pm the next day, we woke up 5 hours before the flight landed to get used to the time difference faster. Our plan was great; we woke up, ate breakfast and watched a movie. We landed 45 minutes early in India!