Mumbai Airport

November 21, 2024 | 01:00 to 4:30 in the morning

From the beginning, we knew that on a longer journey, not everything can always go smoothly. We have been traveling for almost 2 months now, everything wonderful, and then our trip from La Reunion to Bangkok is approaching.

From La Reunion, we flew to Mauritius and booked a ticket with Mauritius Airlines over Mumbai to Bangkok. At check-in, we were informed that our luggage would go all the way to Bangkok, but the boarding pass for the Mumbai-Bangkok leg would only be issued in Mumbai. After a lengthy discussion, we had to board the flight without this boarding pass.

At the transfer desk at Mumbai Airport, things got quite chaotic, the discussion lasted almost 1 hour: first, we were supposed to receive our boarding passes after the flight had already taken off. Then possibly in 2 hours, and after further discussions, in an hour. For that, we had to hand over our passports, which we initially did not want to do, but we had no other choice to somehow get out of the airport.

After 1.5 hours of waiting without drinking water – the vending machine did not accept credit cards, and we had no Indian currency with us – we finally received our boarding passes, as well as our passports.

Then came the security check: almost every item in our two carry-on trolleys was touched and examined. This took another 20 minutes. We just barely made our flight.

We arrived in Bangkok completely overwhelmed; a wheel on Jörg's suitcase had broken off (the damage report has not been answered until today), several items in my large suitcase were damaged despite using the same packing system as always, and some clothes in my carry-on trolley were found to be greasy.