How to Ruin a Dream Backpacking Trip in One Easy Step
I really didn’t expect the assault rifle…
Picture the scene:
You have spent the last three years of your life saving every penny you can scrape together to embark upon what you hope to be a life-changing, no-going-back tour of our beautiful planet Earth…
Only to find that a few short minutes after landing on foreign soil, you’re slumped on the side of the road, your passport has disappeared without a trace, and a semi-automatic assault rifle is being held inches from your face.
Yes, my friends, that was me.
‘It can only get better,’ I told myself.
I had already ticked off the #1 worst-case scenario travelers can imagine.
Besides finding yourself in an Indian jail cell or being abducted into an Eastern European human-trafficking ring that only Liam Neeson could pull you out of, losing your passport on your first day is right up there.
I could hear my mother's voice in my head. ‘Don’t do anything stupid. And look after your passport!’
It was Mumbai, early November, 2019, in those forgotten days before lock-downs and face masks, before Corona was even a ingredient in a Chinaman’s bat soup.
I wasn’t even planning to stay in this town. I had stepped out of the airport building for a moment of fresh air after my eight-hour flight from the UK (the air in India’s cities is anything but fresh). I had time to kill before my connection to Goa.
After ten minutes of swallowing down my first gulps of the Indian atmosphere — albeit at the taxi-rank of an international airport — and realising that the air outside was significantly fresher and cooler inside the terminal, I began to make my way back inside.
In the middle of the entrance stood a soldier, kitted up as if ready to storm the borders of Kashmir, assault rifle in hand, flash-bang grenades and a pistol strapped to his waist, his chest inflated with a bulletproof vest and his head topped with a military-grade helmet.
“Passport and boarding pass.”
“Certainly”, I replied, with a cock of my eyebrow and all the confidence and charisma and of a 50’s jet setter being offered his third glass of complimentary Moët.
Oh, how sudden was my fall from grace. How quickly did the confidence and charisma drain away…
..only to be replaced with ice-cold dread creeping up my legs and settling in my stomach, as I patted down my pockets, rummaged through my fanny pack (I said it), and began to search through my carry-on rucksack.
Nothing.
The soldier eyed me as the panic began to rise.
“Mate, I just cleared border security twenty minutes ago. It must be right at the bottom here somewhere,” I said, as I attempted to step past him.
“No entry into the airport building without a boarding pass and a passport.” He jerked his head towards a sign on the door.
I got on my knees and began to empty out my bag. Nothing.
I thought about trying to argue with, or reason with, or even bribe the guy.
As these thoughts floated through my naive little mind, a vehicle aggressively sounded its horn somewhere behind me.
An armoured personnel carrier, with metal bars welded to its front windscreen, a manned machine gun mounted on its roof, and an assault rifle leaning casually out of the passenger window, was revving its engine at an Uber driver half asleep in the car in front of them.
As I watched, a soldier stepped out and slammed the butt of his gun into the roof of the car, and shouted in Marathi.
Mumbai airport security does not mess around. And they have good reasons. Something told me bribery and persuasion were not going to work here.
So there I sat, the entire contents of my backpack scattered on the pavement, all my pockets turned out, every imaginable crevice exhumed. Nothing.
Despair settled instantly.
‘That’s it, I’m finished. Trip over,’ I thought to myself. Even if by some magic I could get past this guard, how the hell am I going to get on the next flight?
My mind slowly drifted to my new life as a nomadic, stateless individual as if it was playing a movie trailer; Colby Smith: a stranger in an alien culture, shunned by his embassy, wiling away the rest of his days in an Mumbai opium den, turning his hand to petty thievery and scams to eke out a measly existence down in the slums…
I shook myself out of it and began to think. A twelve-month visa had been stamped in my passport within the last half an hour. What did I do next? I had gone to buy cigarettes…but the shop didn’t accept card, so I had then gone to the currency exchange to buy rupees…
The thing about Indian currency is that you cannot (legally) take it outside of India.
It’s a protected currency. You can’t just pick it up from one of those miserable people trapped inside a perspex cage for eight hours a day at Tesco. You have to buy it in India.
(which actually drives people to the exchange-beating rates from black market street dealers)
If you want to legitimately buy Rupees with Pounds or Euros, generally you have to provide identification to prove you’re travelling and not street dealer.
The other thing about the Indian Rupee is that its value is at rock bottom against Western currencies; you’ll get around one hundred Rupees to one Pound. You can get a full meal, dessert, tea, and come back with change from a couple of quid.
This means if you’re just striding into the country, head in the clouds, dreaming about the once in the lifetime adventure you’re on the cusp of diving into, and you ask for five hundred dollars worth of Rupees at a currency exchange, they will hand you a wad of cash so thick and crisp you’ll feel like you just received a backhander from a Russian Oligarch.
All of this adds up to a scenario where an idiot Englishman, caught in the headlights of his own stupidity, blinded by the wedge of bills in his hand, stuffs the money into his wallet and walks away with his head held high like a Viceroy of the Raj, leaving his god-damn passport on the counter of the money exchange booth, no more than thirty minutes after he’s touched down on Indian tarmac.
Luckily for this idiot Englishman, a member of airport security, thankfully one with a larger range of dialogue than an Elder Scrolls NPC, overhears me trying to explain this whole situation to India’s last line of defense, who is regurgitating his one “No entry into the airport without a passport” line like he’s chanting an ancient mantra.
As calmly as I could, I explained to the woman that I must have left my passport back inside, but I couldn’t get back inside without a passport. A quick flash of my boarding pass later, a phone call, and the sound of high heels clopping against a hard floor, and I had my passport back in my hand. Never before have I felt so grateful and simultaneously so much of a dickhead.
I repacked my bag, let my nerves settle, and began to make my way into the building. A hand on my chest stopped me. THE GEEZER WITH THE GUN STILL WANTED TO SEE MY PASSPORT AND BOARDING PASS! Hare Ram, what kind of elaborate ruse he imagined I was running I’ll never know.
‘You’ve got a mind like a bloody sieve’, my mum used to say to me.
It can only get better from here, right?
