30/ 100 Pavement Dog
The Journey to Varanasi – Part 3
Once the exercise classes in Jodhpur airport had finished, the waiting area returned to a state of calm. There were very few flights leaving so everyone fell into their usual routine of watching video clips on social media. The announcements were all too garbled to understand, and the departure board only showed tomorrow’s flights, so we just kept a beady eye on the single departure gate in front of us.
I had just got into my book when a chap in an IndiGo Airlines shirt started to walk around the room announcing that our flight to Delhi was now boarding. There was no need to board by seat number or boarding group – we simply made a line and waited to pass by the desk where they scanned our boarding passes and we were free! But we weren’t, not quite yet.
In a first for us we walked down some steps and onto the concrete in the warm sunshine outside. The aircraft was waiting for us with the doors open and the steps deployed, ready for its guests, however, between the plane and us were a couple of trestle tables plonked randomly in the middle of a huge expanse of the apron. There was clearly one table for the men, staffed by male police (or soldiers, I’ve no idea) and one for women staffed by female police. We had to walk to the tables and have a final bizarre security check where they peered into our bags, scanned them with an electronic wand and, of course, checked our boarding passes which, by now, were almost worn through from over use.
Eventually the staff were 110% that none of us posed a risk, and we were all who we said we were, and we made it onto the aircraft. Then, rather than getting airborne, the pilot came over the tannoy to tell us that because this was a military airport we have to give priority for the fighter jets and, because there was some kind of drill happening that day, it was going to take a while…
