It was the middle of October and Diwali was round the corner . Travelling was the last thing on my mind especially since we still hadn’t seen the last of CoVid .

Besides, my head was filled with menu options for the Diwali party that Prima Donna had organised for the extended family.

With thoughts of Chicken Curry and Kadai Panir swimming in my head I paid scant regard to Prima Donna’s prattle about her itinerary to the North East . After all she was travelling with a friend and I was by now grappling with a new spoke in the wheel – Anna Shetty’s suggestion to serve a pan Asian meal .

However, there is Someone Upstairs who is looking down and making sure that all my plans go for a toss.

So there I was on Thursday morning ( 29th November ) making my way down the Sea Link towards Mumbai’s CSIA to catch the early morning flight to Guwahati .

Believe it or not, this was my first time at the Domestic terminal and I was quite surprised to see it match up to its international cousin.

The airport was buzzing with activity and once inside it was more like a train station with literally hundreds of passengers ready to take off . While it was heartening to see so many people travel, the Security couldn’t cope with the crowd especially since the additional step of lowering the mask for identification slowed down the process , so it was quite a long wait till I could get my morning fix of coffee.

The flight was full and we had the last seats in the cabin . It didn’t matter much even though it was a three hour flight. But seeing the constant trips to the loo made me realise that coffee before flying is a bad idea unless you are wearing an adult diaper .

As promised, the IndiGo flight was on time and we landed smoothly at the LGB ( poor Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi after whom the airport is named would have been shocked that LGB has a queer connotation these days! ).

It had a charming old world air about it even though it was being upgraded and had cordoned off areas under construction. But it was awarded the prize for the Best Improved Airport. Yet somethings, like attitude, cannot be upgraded that easily and we had a brief introduction to a local time that literally differed from ours. After an unduly long wait at the luggage belt, we stepped out to meet our driver Anil who held our name on a scrappy sheet of paper and welcomed us with a friendly grin that brought back memories of the childhood song ‘Never smile at a crocodile’.

Stuffing our luggage in the back, he took the long way back to the city and in almost half the time it took us to reach Guwahati, he traveled the next 22km to the hotel ! But this, he claimed was a more scenic route and less crowded though as the sun began to set we could see less and less of the landscape rolling by.

But finally we did reach Guwahati .

Ciao