My plan for today was to fly from Dharamshala to Jaipur. Normally people who go to Jaipur travel via train from Delhi or Agra, but seeing as the bus from Dharamshala to Delhi already takes so long, I decided I’d fly. The Dharamshala airport is so small so there is no direct flight, so I’d booked a flight with a layover in Delhi. Because my flight wasn’t departing until 2pm, I had some time to relax and get a nice breakfast in Mcleodganj before heading to the airport, so I went back to The Other Space cafe where I had breakfast yesterday to enjoy the great views and food once again.

After relaxing on the balcony at the cafe, I walked back to my hotel and finished packing. The hotel arranged for a taxi to come to take me to the airport around 11am. I assumed this would be much earlier than necessary, but I was concerned there would be unexpected hold-ups. There are really only two roads up to Mcleodganj from Dharamshala, and the one the driver wanted to take was closed. The only remaining road isn’t wide enough for two directions of traffic at some points, but without a police officer to negotiate passing, people just try to shove in front of each other and create traffic jams, so there was a huge backup all the way up the mountain. While we were waiting in traffic the driver got really upset at all the people riding on mopeds who were cutting in front of us and surely contributing to the problem. Despite this we somehow still made it to the airport (16 km away) in less than an hour.

I got to the airport and went to check-in for my first domestic flight in India. Interestingly they had me put all my checked luggage through an x-ray before I went to the check-in desk, and they ziptied my luggage closed with dated and signed stickers on the zip ties. SpiceJet is a low-cost airline with a pretty poor reputation, but they were the only airline flying this route, leaving me with not much choice. They also saw my carry-on bag and asked me to weigh it, and made me pay an overweight bag fee per-kg I was overweight, which ended up being pretty pricy.

I was so early to my flight and I had a lot of time to kill. I went through security, where I had to take all objects with any trace of metal out of my bag, which included coins, chargers, cables, laptops, headphones, power banks, etc. Basically, I had to dump my bag out into the bin, which really defeats the purpose in my opinion. Then, I was thoroughly patted down by a police officer after walking through a metal detector. They then stamped my boarding pass and wrote down my passport number in a book (which reminded me of airport security in Egypt).

I sat in the terminal and tried to charge my phone, but either the outlet died or my adapter died when I plugged it in because I heard a spark noise and then my phone wouldn’t charge. Luckily I had a power bank with me. I sat for a while and eventually got hungry so I checked out the snack shop. Everything was very overpriced. I bought a cup of instant noodles and some lemon tea and it cost more than $6.

Finally it was time to board, so I got up and headed to the gate. There was theoretically a boarding order but it wasn’t clear what that order was and everyone just got up at the same time and got in line. We walked across the apron and boarded the Dash-8 to fly to Delhi.

The flight was short and uneventful, and soon we landed at Terminal 1 of Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi. For whatever reason, T1 arrivals and T1 departures are separate buildings, so we had to park at a remote stand and take a bus to the arrivals building. That building contained the baggage claims, but my bag was checked all the way through to Jaipur, so I then went outside and boarded a shuttle bus to go to the T1 departures building. To get into the departures building I had to show my passport and boarding pass which were “thoroughly” inspected before I was allowed in. I then had to clear security again, which involved the requisite dumping of my entire backpack into a bin and a thorough pat-down.

I had a pretty long layover so I went to the Encalm Lounge which is accessible through Priority Pass. The lounge was very nice with a good selection of food and lots of seating, but it was really crowded.

After spending a few hours catching up on blogs from Australia and trying to contact Airtel to convert my SIM card to an eSIM (see yesterday’s post), I headed down to the boarding gates for my flight to Jaipur. We took a bus to the plane and then I boarded to find that my pre-selected window seat had no window! Luckily it was a very short flight from Delhi to Jaipur.

Upon arrival at Jaipur airport I got my bag and headed to the dedicated Uber pickup area to take an Uber to my hotel. I booked a hotel that was close to the train station, because my plan was to take a train early the next morning to Ranthambore National Park.

I checked into my hotel, H R Palace, and since it was already pretty late I didn’t want to venture too far to get food, so I ate at the rooftop restaurant of the hotel. I had some paneer butter masala and naan, which was just okay, but it was pretty inexpensive.