The B Word

No, I am not cursing...I actually just can't pronounce the name of the city we are flying to this weekend, and it made booking travel difficult.

There is one site that accepts non-Indian credit cards, www.makemytrip.co.in, and when we book flights, we tend to have one person (yours truly) book them and then umm, invoice people, afterwards. Well, today for some reason, we could get one ticket for the flights we wanted, we could even get three tickets for the flights we wanted, but we could not get four, and that was the number we were looking for.

Both flights were on Indigo, so we figured we would try calling Indigo Airlines, in the off chance they'd help us out and book directly. First my cell did not feel the need to call a 1-800 number. Then we went into a phone room, and finally got a hold of someone. I told them I wanted to book travel, they said, where would you like to fly, I said from Hyderabad to Bhubaneswar, hesitantly, since up till now I'd been calling it the b-place. 'Excuse me?' they said, I tried again. still nothing. Finally I think he understood, and then I asked, can you book with American Credit cards? No he said, but you can reserve the flight and hold it for 24 hours. 'Yes,' I said, 'but I can't actually book it right?'
'No, but you can reserve it for 24 hours, where are you flying ma'am?'
'No, that's ok thanks, I'll try MakeMyTrip.'
'Ok, is there anything else I can help you with today?'
click.

Ok, let's try make my trip. Call one number on the site, tell them I want to reserve flights, the website is not letting me. They ask where, I have to use the b-word again, repeat twice, once they somewhat understand they say: 'Oh, you are leaving from Hyderabad? you need to call the main reservation line, here is the number'
Call new number listen to Entertainer over and over and over and--well, you get the point. finaly someone answers, rinse and repeat, 'Oh, you've called the wrong number, let me give you the number.'
'No, they said to call this number for reservations, can you transfer me?'
'Hold on ma'am' ...more music

meanwhile we are attempting to buy 1 ticket from one computer and 3 tickets from the other. What clever Googlers we are. Something continues to go wrong and we can't get the timing right

..finally the music stops and someone asks what I want, I tell them, using the b-word again, I think i've gotten better at it, apparently it's not Boo-ban-eshwar, it's buh-ban-eshwar, or something.

He takes my name and cell and says he'll call back in five minutes while his system re-boots.

We finally manage to push pay at the same time, and both get blank screens and error messages....and then, low and behold, two confirmation emails appear in my inbox and we have flights. Bring on the beach!

....and no, MakeMyTrip never called back.