We had our flight to from bombay airport to addis ababa on 10th october 5 am and we were to leave for bombay on the night of 9th from new delhi. Since the event was to clash with the minor 2 exams hence permission needed to be seeked for it beforehand. Since the matter was to involve UG section hence we needed to take permission from the Dean UGS Dr. Kale. We started chasing him for few weeks to seek permission but each meeting ended with small lecture on professional approach, project plannning and management. Finally we got a permission from HOD mechanical Engg. deptt. that too at 1p.m. on the day we were supposed to leave delhi. The next task was forex required for the trip. By this time we had learned some professional approach so we divided the work and the work of forex came to me along with one of my team member. Finally we got hold of required amount of forex at about 6pm and after that neither me nor my friend had the luggage we were supposed to carry for the trip. Had we tried to go to our homes for collecting the luggage than we would have missed our flights, so here we took the advantage of telecommunication , and troubled everyone ranging from close friends to family members for sending our luggage to airport.
Finally we did reach the airport well in time and thankfully our luggage too reached on time but when we were boarding for the flight here came another blow, the main strenght of our team Nehra got a call from his course advisor to came back immediately our face dire consequences. So even before leaving delhi we had half of our strength lost.
Things went fine for some time untill we catched the Ehtiopian airlines flight from Mumbai airport. The flight was late and there were fair chances of ours missing our connecting flight from Jo Bole airport addis ababa, for Joburg. But we did reached there in time and boarded the flight by running through the runway. (That would remind someone of catching a DTC bus ahead of your bus at red light). After sitting into it, for the first time we could believe that we will reach Joburg in time.
Finally we did reach Joburg airport on time and at the airport was waiting a good looking lady (though she was much healthier than any of us) with the name plate having our team member's name. Actually she was send by the backpacker where we had booked our rooms through internet. This was one of the only good thing that had happened to us. Finally we struck the road with her on har ford candor. The lady was driving at the speed in excess of 120kmph. We were so astonished at seeing the speedometer that we had to ask her whether it was working fine or was simply making fool out of us. Though the speed at which she was driving was faster than an average express train that runs on indian railway tracks, but at no point of time i found her driving rash or careless. What i noticed was a great sence of understanding between commuters while driving. There was hustle between vehicles to overtake the other vehicle simply because the other one has been moving with it for some time, or one should speed up because other was speeding. There I understood the meaning of lonely yellow lights blinking in numerous places, indicating that one should slow down as there was merging traffic. Even a single board saying STOP was a reason enough for the driver to stop for a while look around and give way to the other vehicle if it is passing at the adjacant road and than move.
After at about an hour of drive we reached the 1322 backpacker, the place where whe had made the bookings. The manager Tim was traveller by himself and was a britisher by origin. He gave us the keys and lots of advices. He made us aware about the dangers in south africa. He used the word "mugging" which i was unaware of so i thought that he was referring to "murdering", this scared a shit out of us. He terrified us so much that every black seemed to be a criminal to us. Even on the road we changed path seeing a black coming from front and so on. But about two days later we realized what the actual condition was, and how these white afrikans were making a lot of fuss about the high crime rate and linking all the crime to blacks. I'll continue this one in one of later blogs
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