A week in Bangalore

Your correspondent reached Bangalore spending almost 19 hours on a Boeing 747 from San Francisco to Bangalore via Frankfurt. After landing at the unearthly hour of 1:23 AM we got a scenic tour of the airport from the plane. When you spend 40 minutes on the runway because the plane has no place to park, you know the traffic is bad.

Although the airport seems to be frozen in the Nehruvian past, the airlines have been rushing to offer innovative services to travelers. Air Deccan allows you to purchase tickets via SMS. Kingfisher's ground staff walks around with a wireless terminal helping passengers to check in and print out boarding passes without waiting in line.

Traffic in Bangalore has rapidly outpaced the infrastructure available, although I've heard that the Golden Quadrilateral has speeded up inter-city connectivity.
Bangalore now has an Inner Ring Road, an Outer Ring Road, a Peripheral Ring Road. All it needs is the One Ring to connect them together.

The only thing worse than arriving at 1:23 AM in Bangalore is departing at 3:20 AM from Bangalore - you're jet lagged even before departure, but on the bright side there's no traffic while getting to the airport.

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