* the arrival
Posted on January 12th, 2008 by Alex. Filed under India.
After so many hours in the plane, the passengers felt happy that they could walk freely and did not have to breath in the dry and cold air of the AC of the plane. But what was this? Just before baggage claim an x-ray machine to scan the people’s cabin luggage and that after the flight? The reason for that revealed itself, when the passengers wanted to leave the airport: If customs found any electronic parts in the luggage the duty slip of the immigration sheet is marked, which was again checked at the exit.
At the exit the guy kindly redirected me to a desk and asked me, what kind of electronics I have in the bag. I answered that it is a laptop and an external hard disk for backup purposes. The backup hard disk is not very big (maybe 40GB) and very old. He asked me about the value of the disk and I replied that I will not even pay 5 Euros for it. Then he thought for a second and said that the duty will be Rs800, which is way too much. I said something like: “What is this?” and I am so proud that I bargained it down to the half. So there is no close season once you arrived in India.
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:53 am
That’s weird alex, i don’t think the scanner detects hard disks. I moved with 2 external hardisks, a 80 gig and an 500 gig(bought in germany fujitsu siemens to be specific) and i had both of them on my luggage and i was never questioned. I think it would be better if you carry the laptop with you in the cabin and not in the luggage.
Did i mention about the psp and umds i stuffed in my trenchcoat pocket . I don’t understand how you get caught for carrying only a single external hard disk?
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May 23rd, 2008 at 11:01 am
Yeah, they just wanted to make some money from the “rich” foreigners.
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