29/ 100 Archway Dog

After being scanned, rescanned, and scanned again our bags were safely somewhere in the bowels of Jodhpur airport. Probably being scanned, just to be safe.

The airport in Jodhpur is very small and is part of a much larger military airport but I really liked the compactness of it. The entire waiting area consisted of one single large room with just two gates – one of which didn’t seem to be used and was barely visible through the hand-print smeared brown smoked glass that India is so fond of. It had a pretty relaxed vibe and, since there was nowhere to disappear to, you couldn’t get lost and you could literally see the door to the runway right in front of you so there was no need to panic about being in the wrong place. There was a departure board, but it was only showing flights for the next day.

Fiona went off to browse the couple of shops that were there and made a critical error. One of the shops sold traditional Indian sweets, but it was more expensive than buying them in the towns, even though they still weren’t expensive at all. She ate a free sample and declared that it was probably the nicest sweet she’d ever eaten, but refused to buy a box because she was certain there would be plenty just like it in a myriad of sweet shops in Varanasi. Only, despite five days of hunting, there wasn’t.

We were both getting settled into the hard plastic chairs that had been fixed into place in every available bit of space available around the edge of the room before a man and a woman in uniform appeared, shouted something in Hindi and blew a whistle. A little confused as to what was happening we started to worry that there was a problem. Most of the passengers in the lounge jumped up and formed neat lines right in the middle of the room.

This wasn’t another security check, nor was it an evacuation, fire drill, or plane boarding or even an Indian version of the Slosh. This was a pre-flight exercise class organised by the military or police (not sure which). There was no music, just the chap in uniform shouting instructions to everyone to walk on your tiptoes, walk on your heels, bend your legs. That kind of thing. It was absolutely bonkers and a great idea at the same time and, if you watch the video clip below, you’ll see it was very popular.

I have never seen exercise classes at an airport anywhere else in the world. We showed it to our friend in Delhi who travels a lot and he’d never seen it either. If I come across it again I might even join in. And if Fiona ever come across those particular sweets again she might have to join in too to burn off the excess calories.