As Phespirit prepared to leave southern India he reflected upon the thoroughly enjoyable time he'd spent in this wonderful corner of the world. He pledged that he would recommend, to anyone with the means, that they too should visit Kerala and experience the beautiful scenery, tropical climate and measured pace of life. His heart was still warm with benevolent feelings as he entered the international departure terminal at Trivandrum Airport. Two hours later, after the most infuriating and needlessly protracted check-in procedure he'd experienced anywhere in the world, Phespirit amended his view to one of not wishing the place on his worst enemies. He has calmed down a bit since then but would still caution anyone intending to pass through Trivandrum Airport that they should brace themselves for queues, bureaucracy, inefficiency and woeful organisation on a grand scale.

Having a population in excess of one billion, India must create the illusion of full employment by contriving layer upon layer of pointless jobs. This ensures that for every one person in post there are at least three other people either watching them or hindering them, and that no one person is responsible for more than a single task. It is definitively illustrated by the check-in ordeal at Trivandrum Airport, in which passengers are made to queue no fewer than eight times, each time culminating with the issuing, checking or double-checking of stamps, stickers, labels or markers.

Step 1 - the hold luggage x-ray machine
International flights are relatively few and far between at Trivandrum Airport. This means that officials have the luxury of being able to wait until every single passenger has arrived at the terminal before they start the check-in procedures. Passengers must join a vast queue that doubles back on itself four or five times and is scarcely recognisable as a single line. Whilst waiting patiently they are handed tags to be attached to each individual item of cabin luggage. The queue is for a single giant x-ray machine that scans all of the hold luggage. Passengers feed their luggage into the machine, which has about seven or eight operatives loitering around it, and collect each item as it emerges on the other side. The whole purpose of these security procedures is undermined by returning bags to their owners as this creates ample opportunity for explosives, contraband, munitions, etc., to be inserted without further check. A security label was stuck to each item but not across the zip or lock. This was an early sign of things to come - an exercise characterised by its pointlessness and futility.
Step 2 - the hold luggage check-in
Having been sufficiently bemused at the x-ray machine, passengers then move on to the hold luggage check-in queue. Phespirit joined the first of two parallel queues that were shuffling almost imperceptibly towards three open check-in desks. After a little while it became evident that something other than Phespirit's pessimism was making the second queue appear to move faster. It transpired that a young airport employee - an absolute study of dull oafishness - was allowing one queue to use one open desk and the other queue to split itself between the other two open desks. Not only was he allowing this, but he was actively orchestrating it. Phespirit's first attempts to point out the anomaly were met with the endearingly innocent smile of an incurable idiot. It was only after his second attempt, which involved higher blood pressure, a laying on of hands, and some close-proximity plain speaking, that an altogether more balanced system was introduced, to the approval of all other passengers. Upon arrival at the check-in desk - inexplicably manned by three or four individuals - all hold luggage was registered, tagged and spirited away on a conveyor belt. Passengers were issued with a boarding card that had been pre-stamped three times over, and to which their luggage identity stickers were attached. Ominously, no seat numbers were assigned at this stage but a reference number from the passenger list was scribbled onto each card in green ink.
Step 3 - passport control
The next step offered the widest selection of queues in the entire process, all moving at unfathomably different speeds as they mingled their way towards a perplexing arrangement of seven or eight passport control desks. Passport control officers are primarily interested in passports and landing cards, both of which would have been thoroughly processed upon arrival in India and have the stamps to prove it. Individual passport control officers may also take a passive interest in any other documents placed within their reach but this appeared to be a matter of personal choice rather than strict policy. Culmination of the procedure sees the landing card removed and severely beaten with stamps of various sizes using a kaleidoscope of inks. The passport itself receives an airport immigration stamp and the officer's own personal stamp. Thus, Phespirit may rejoice in the knowledge that he was duly processed by one P. Sajiva Kumar, SI of Police.
Step 4 - the hold luggage double-check
Now the most baffling of all the check-in requirements. Passengers are required to step outside the building and identify the bags and cases that they had handed over in Step 2. Gangs of young employees loiter around waiting to accompany each passenger to their luggage, requiring that each item be indicated clearly by means of a pointing finger. With a deftly flourished ballpoint pen, they mark crosses on all the tags fixed to the luggage and on the corresponding tags stuck to the boarding cards. Once this job has been completed for all it's worth, the nonplussed passenger is free to return to the check-in hall and resume queuing.
Step 5 - checking the hold luggage double-check
All queues from this point onwards are single-file only and therefore excruciatingly tedious. The first of these queues serves no discernable purpose except that - as one spirited passenger remarked to his fellows - "they want to check that you've queued". However, in spite of its seemingly worthless nature this process rewards the patient passenger with a veritable abundance of new stamps - a plethora of checks and clearances that use up almost all available space on the boarding card. Champion!
Step 6 - seat allocation
From the point of view of the passenger this is the most important part of the whole process. It determines whether there is even the slenderest chance that any measure of comfort will be achievable over the next thirteen hours. As the queue was for a Monarch Airlines flight, all two hundred and thirty-odd passengers could be heard voicing the opinion that there was no chance whatsoever. Monarch is the most cramped and inhospitable airline with which Phespirit has ever flown. Legroom is almost non-existent and water, even on a long haul flight, must be paid for, one pound a time. Phespirit considers this to be disgusting parsimony that ought to be illegal since it undermines even the most basic recommendations on their own in-flight safety cards. As Phespirit was, by this stage, towards the back end of proceedings he had plenty of time to mentally prepare for the atrocious conditions to which he would be subjected. However, he was ultimately saved by being quite visibly the tallest person in the queue. He was properly rewarded with a sticker on his boarding card indicating "Rear Entrance 40D" - an aisle seat in the very last row, next to which there was one of only three empty seats on the whole flight. All the extra-legroom seats had long been sold to short-arses who were willing to meet the ransom demands of a mercenary airline.
Step 7 - entering the departure lounge
Nearly there! Up the stairs to a modest lounge area that is crammed with rows of standard issue airport seating and fringed with non-descript food stalls and half-hearted gift shops. No need to dwell here too long, so Phespirit headed straight for the entrance to the boarding gate area. A brace of airport employees stood waiting to provide yet another check on the sufficiency of stamps and stickers festooned over Phespirit's boarding card. By this time he had been in the system for about two hours.
Step 8 - the cabin luggage x-ray machine
At last, the final stage of the check-in process; the x-ray check on cabin luggage. Queuing was involved yet again. The tags on the cabin luggage had to be checked, as indeed did the stamps on the tags on the cabin luggage. The luggage was scanned by machine and the passengers were scanned by officials. To contemplate falling at this last hurdle would have been too agonising, so it was with enormous relief that Phespirit passed through unhindered and slumped into a seat by his boarding gate.

Of course, whilst the check-in process may have been completed, further requirements to queue still lay ahead: a queue at the boarding gate desk, a queue to board the airport bus, a queue to board the plane itself. And having boarded, the last vestige of organisation finally broke down as hundreds of passengers simultaneously attempted to cram themselves and their excesses of luggage into the woefully inadequate spaces provided. From his vantage point at the back of the plane, Phespirit was able to observe how incompetence and stupidity were dispensed and dispatched in equal measure by passengers and crew alike.

International travel can be a thrilling, glamorous, escapist adventure ..... but not always.

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