Here's a pic of me right before I departed from SFO, holding my plane tickets. Steve said that I shold take a picture of myself before and after my trip to compare and see if I get skinnier or darker. Haha. I guess we'll see what happens after 3 months.The flights went very well. People were telling me that Lufthansa has great service, and they were right! My first flight to Frankfurt had an extremely smooth landing. I was seriously impressed at how smooth the transition was. All of the meals that were served (I had one breakfast, one lunch, and two dinners) were quite decent, and they provided [almost] real silverware! Of course, they were greatly dulled down so as not to pose a risk, but they were actually made of metal. That's something.
On my second flight between Frankfurt and Hyderabad, I became acquainted with the guy sitting next to me, whose name was Naga. He was very friendly, and since he lived in Hyderabad, at one point I asked him if he had any tips for me. He said, "What kind of tips?" and I said "Like things to visit or check out." At this point, I realized that I have to be careful about using slang or idioms, or it will result in very confusing conversations. His response was, "Checkout? Don't worry, you'll be with me, so you should be fine."
I'm very grateful that he actually stuck with me throughout the entire arrival process. We braved the crowds together, and he even found a cart that we could share to place our luggage on. Our luggage came toward the very end, so we probably spent at least half an hour just watching the luggage pass us by.
Finally, we were ready to go through customs and exit the airport. However, I just knew that such an easy travel would be too good to be true. Sure enough, when we handed our slips to the custom officer, he took a look at one my luggages and said, "Go see the customs officers" and he pointed to a bunch of desks. I was wondering what that weird white mark was on my luggage.
The guy behind the desk told us that our luggage had be scanned. Really, it was just my one piece of luggage that was marked, but they scanned everything including Naga's. At this point, I was already feeling bad that Naga had to go through all of this, when he could have easily just walked through customs without me and left. While looking at my luggage, they questioned the liquids ("no, it's not alcohol"), a cell phone ("it's just a cell for personal use"), and several control pads for a computer.
The control pads are what gave me trouble. I said that they were for work, so because they exceeded the Rs8000 personal allowance in total, they wanted me to pay taxes on it. I was fine with paying taxes on it because it's for the company and I could just expense it, but then they started giving me a hard time about the cost of each control pad. They wanted to know the cost of each one so that they could calculate the appropriate tax to pay, but silly me, I had no idea and I'd left the invoice from the package at home. How was I supposed to know that I would still need that invoice?
I estimated that each control pad was about $7. It's probably more, but to me they're just extra computer peripherals. Of course, the officials (3-4 of them) doubted me. "How do you know that it's $7? Do you think they're $7? What made you come to that decision? Do you just think that 7 is just a nice number?" Sheesh. And when I tried to explain why I thought it was $7, they just kept interrupting me or wouldn't listen. I'm sure they just thought I was some stupid foreigner.
Thankfully Naga was there to talk with them and help repeat what they were saying when I didn't understand. At first they said they would just detain them, and I could come back the next day with a proper invoice, but of course they didn't really want to go through that. We said that they could just calculate whatever taxes and we'll just pay it so we can go, but their estimate came up to a ridiculous amount somewhere around $140. I'm fairly positive that the cost of the 7 control pads didn't cost that much, so there's no way the taxes could be that much too.
They wanted me to pay in cash. I did not have $140 in cash, neither in US dollars or Indian rupees. I asked if I could pay by credit card, and they said no. It was obvious what they were trying to do. Naga tried to offer them my $20. That was all that I had, and there was no way for me to get cash. Their proposed alternative was that I go to the duty-free store right next to the desks and purchase alcohol -- and they wouldn't give me a receipt for the taxes. However, I could pay by credit card there. At this point, I didn't have much of a choice.
Per Naga's advice, we purchased a $20 bottle of alcohol. We knew that this was not enough, but he said that I had to be tough. If they said it wasn't enough (and they undoubtedly would), I'd have to say something along the lines of "But I did what you said. If you don't want it, then give me my receipt." The situation was very confusing to me, and it was hard for me to be tough about something when I didn't understand what was really going on.
While I finished paying for the alcohol, Naga went to give it to them, and of course they told me to go exchange it for a $50 bottle instead. I'm sure that Naga did his best to persuade them, but he whispered to me that we might as well do it since they're not giving up and letting us go. So we did. We exchanged it and gave them the bottle of alcohol, and they finally signed off our slips.
So after one hour, $50 spent, and lots of confusion and exasperation, we finally went through customs.
I looked into the crowd for a driver that would be holding up a sign with my name, but no luck. Naga had found his family, and they were kind enough to let me use their cell phone to call the Head Driver and inquire about my ride. The Head Driver said that my driver should be there and he would follow up and call him. Then Naga's family said that they'd seen someone waiting with a sign that had my name on it. Sure enough, I'd dug into the crowd once more, and there was someone with a sign with my name on it. He had been worried because I had taken so long that he had gone up to the Lufthansa office to double-check. I wish that I'd had a way to inform him that I was still stuck in the airport so that he wouldn't have to worry.
After all that, things were finally on their way again. The driver helped me carry my luggage to the car and drove me to my place. Again, I'm now comfortably resting in my bed. I'm also wide awake -- it's early afternoon back home, and I had a lot of rest on the plane, as well as adrenaline in my system.
I'm just very very thankful that I met Naga and that he was kind enough to help me through the whole endeavor. I would've most likely been stuck in a more difficult bribe, as well as lost at the airport trying to find my driver. I gave him my email address and told him to contact me if he ever wants a job at my company. Sadly, it's all that I had to offer.
It's crazy. I didn't even step out of the airport and I had to deal with the corruption. But at least I made it. This will be an interesting 3 months.
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