A trek in the Indian State of Kerala (CX 77W to/from MAA)

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Continuing with the TR, that evening, we went to Attukal Devi Temple. Unlike a regular day, it was more crowded than usual due to the Pongala festival. We took an auto rickshaw, but they were not allowed to go past a certain point so we had to make our way walking with the crowd to the temple despite it being night time. Nonetheless, the pictures and lighting for the festival around the temple are amazing, so here are a few.

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The next day morning, we went to Thycaud, a small neighborhood in Trivandrum, where my mother and her brother grew up and went to a temple here. This was particularly in a small area, so only two pictures of this:





The rest of the day was devoted to going to a priest/astrologer's place for an important ritual that had to be done for our ancestors. I did not take pictures and will not go into details about this. All I will tell you is that it's powerful On our second-to-last day (Friday), we went to a temple for an important ritual. While it's prohibited to take pictures inside the temple, here are some pictures of the outside. This place was what the priest/astrologer told us from last trip in November that we had to go to as well; we initially thought we had to hire a car and go 3 hours somewhere in Kerala/Tamil Nadu, but turns out with research, it was just a 6 kilometer journey by auto rickshaw on the main highway to Kovalam Beach (Though it is NOT at the beach, it is on the way to the beach).

The name of the temple for reference is Parasurama Temple Thiruvallam





Everything was done by late morning and after some breakfast and rest, we went to Spencer's for a couple of errands. Spencer has a supermarket in Trivandrum where you can buy groceries and other related items. There's also a bakery with snacks and desserts. It's a little past the main part of MG Road I have typically gone to, so it's been at least 10 years since I've actually spent time in that area.

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To wrap up the Trivandrum portion of the TR, the weather was hot and humid in the afternoon but evening humid but not to a point where you would sweat unbearably. That's the plus thing about the Winter months. Nonetheless, all days were beautiful and sunny weather was prevalent in the area. Some photos of the Sree Varaham temple pond taken at sunset, just near my grandmother's house.









Another thing I wanted to share was that we had a great filter coffee at West Fort in Trivandrum. Pretty much every day, my dad went twice for this in the morning when he woke up at 6am. I went two days out of 5. The place is called Kumbakonam Filter Coffee and I recommend this place.



On Saturday, it was basically just a chill day and it was basically the day we did some final shopping and mainly packing as we were all heading to Chennai that evening. However, my dad is still in India and spending a few days in Chennai and will return to the US on Friday. All 3 of us flew but my mom and I connected from the domestic to international terminal in Chennai, which is seamless.

It was a humid Saturday evening, and we headed to Trivandrum Airport for our IndiGo flight to Chennai. We checked in around 6:45PM and still had quite a lot of time to spare. While the pictures in the domestic terminal are no different like what I had during my November trip, I think some of the pictures correspond to what I probably haven't seen before or what has been there but never saw until now (i.e. a Subway restaurant)









Boarding for our IndiGo flight was originally at Gate 3, but at the last minute just at boarding time, it changed to Gate 2. It's funny, because there were 2 IndiGo planes at the gate and while we weren't told the reason, I guess it could have been due to a technical fault. The good thing is we still had an on-time departure, several minutes ahead of schedule, took off right around STD and landed 20 minutes early in MAA.

The flight as with all IndiGo flights I've been on are always uneventful in terms of service and getting to our destination on time. When we parked at our gate in Chennai, the funny thing is we had to exit from the back of the aircraft, despite it being parked at the aerobridge at the front of the aircraft. My guess would be that the people continuing to Hyderabad on the exact flight would board from the aerobridge.

Shortly after this, we pick up all our bags and take the elevator to the 2nd floor, and head on a walk way to the International terminal. While I did not take pictures of the walk way in Chennai, it's basically indoor consisting of travellators (like Singapore Changi and Hong Kong Airport). One minus thing is you cannot bring your trolley to the transfer walk way so if one had more than a huge check-in bag (like maybe 2 very large rolling bags), it would be cumbersome, because it's protected by a narrow fencing to even enter the walkway.

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Flight: Cathay Pacific Airways Flight CX632
Route: Chennai - Hong Kong
Aircraft: B-KQT (Boeing 777-300ER, 4.3 years)
Livery: Old
Date of Departure: February 24 (2:00AM), Arrival February 24 (9:35AM)
Seat: 51A (Economy Class)
Configuration: 3-class (Business, Premium Economy, Economy) AKA 77G

Going through the walkway transferring from domestic to international was seamless though and we never even had to get out of the airport. At the end there's a security to check your boarding pass and passport and you take an elevator and head to the inside of the International terminal to have it scanned one more time. It was the same way as reverse (International to Domestic terminal). The difference on the reverse while going was when collecting bags from the International terminal, one would have to go outside and find the elevator that would take them to the Domestic terminal. It was seamless but not as seamless as the other way around. I'm guessing there could have been an elevator taking you to the walkway from the inside of the airport but not sure. There's a good possibility that on future trips this may be the norm, as said before.

Being a first timer doing this, I traveled back with my mom and my dad is returning from MAA on Friday morning. First, we all thought that it would require going from outside and saying goodbye from there, but it seems that transferring and saying goodbye would have to be done from inside the walkway before entering the next elevator.

We got to the inside of the International Terminal at 10PM, 4 hours before departure instead of 3, so Cathay Pacific counters did open too. The nice thing is that we had a 'Bag Drop' line which like I said is equivalent to going to 'Internet Check In' on SQ so the process was no more than 5 minutes. Security lines were long but it took about 15 minutes but I liked that it moved very quickly as immigration/customs seemed to be well staffed that evening. Once finished, we head to the airside. I have my dinner, which is a dosa and my mom had a coffee. Updating from my post in Chennai while going, in the International Terminal, you have a Cookie Man but the name is not Tiffin's, it's Chennai Food Express or a name that's part of CFE. Nonetheless, dosa was excellent and filling.





Our flight to Hong Kong. Unfortunately, unless it's daytime, Chennai and most Indian airports offer a very bad view of viewing the aircraft, until unless you go downstairs to the old International terminal. This is B-KQT, which I got and this is still a 9-across 77W (denoted B77G). My dad actually did get this plane when he flew CX870 from HKG to SFO back in June 2017 when there was a family emergency.



Departure to Hong Kong from the board both in Tamil and in English. They put Hong Kong as 'Hongkong' instead of separating the city with two words the way it actually is written. This trip, the flight was on time and we arrived 40 minutes ahead of schedule.





Boarding time started around 1:30AM so we were in for an on-time departure. On this flight, my mom and I met a well known priest from San Jose temple who flew to Chennai and was proceeding to SFO like us. He was on our flight but because of the full flight, I could not find him when walking in Y class as he was not seated next to us.

Wing view from CX632 to HKG from seat 51A.



There were a lot more pre-recorded Tamil announcements on this flight than the last time I flew CX632. The captain made an announcement introducing himself and the fight time to Chennai would be a short 4 hours and 20 minutes and for the most part, surprisingly, there was no turbulence as usually this can commonly be encountered on the Bay of Bengal and around Thailand and Vietnam. We pushed back 5 minutes before departure, started our engines and took off at 2:05AM for our journey to HKG. Unlike SQ, as I had said before, CX will NOT serve you dinner right away on this flight and instead will only serve breakfast 2 hours before arrival to HKG. Good thing my mom and I shared a dosa for dinner earlier knowing this would occur.



Overview of our flight to HKG before pushback.

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Unlike my November trip where my flight from MAA to HKG was delayed by 1 hour, the crew still insisted to close the window shades. However, when breakfast got served, I got woken up after about 1.5 hours of sleep and it was still dark and gradually approaching sunrise. I kept my window shade open and was able to enjoy the sunrise. My breakfast meal looks quite similar but it was not idly. It was a poached egg, which was really good.





Dawn picture over Thailand:



A few pictures of the older CX 3D maps.

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Air-show in Chinese:

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Sunrise over Thailand



The B77G cabin on the Cathay Pacific's Boeing 777-300ER, soon to be B77K



Morning sunshine past Thailand and getting closer to Hong Kong



Useful arrival information. Definitely going to miss this UI on future trips:











The CX belly camera on the 777-300ER.



Around 8:20AM, our captain made an announcement about our descent to Hong Kong that it would be overcast and cold with passing showers. I thought it would be sunny even when they said overcast which has happened almost all the time last trip.

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A few pictures taken upon landing into Hong Kong







We landed at Hong Kong around 8:55AM, about 45 minutes ahead of schedule with a quick taxi to the gate. It was overcast in HKG but we still managed to deplane around 9:05AM. From that point, we head to security and we have a few hours before our flight CX870 to San Francisco.

Our plane B-KQT which we took from MAA at gate 41, which would depart for Melbourne an hour later:





After freshening up, we find out our flight CX870 is delayed 1 hour. Well, those who know my posts from the Singapore Airlines' Flight Delays and Disruptions, I mostly report 77W route delays. I usually suspect the delay is due to the following: 1) Technical problem with an aircraft scheduled 2) #1 that causes an inbound aircraft arriving late to take over the flight with the affected aircraft. Having also used CX's forum and spreadsheet, 1 plane with the configuration that serves the SFO route CX870/879 was available but stopped flying for a few days. There were two other planes at that time which were rostered for their regular routes. On top of that, the plane coming in from BOM was delayed (Supposed to arrive around the time our flight from MAA arrived) to 1PM. At that time, also a plane with the same configuration from LHR could have also done so. Both those 77W were in the old livery and containing Wifi, which coming back I didn't care to use as I cared more about sleeping.

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Upon landing at Hong Kong Airport, we go through security, freshen up and just hang around the terminal. One of the first things we do is grab a coffee and a snack. Since the last trip, this was my favorite place to hop on to. King Bakery is known commonly for their egg tarts, cheese tarts, and meat tarts. Because I'm a vegetarian and do not have egg restrictions, I ate a short crust egg tart, which was by far delicious along with a coffee. The coffee, though not shown is actually cheaper than every coffee shop at HKG including Starbucks. Not only that but it's actually better than HKG Starbucks that I had when I landed from SFO and connected to my MAA flight. This can be found anywhere between gates 20 and 40.





I shared a bit of an egg tart with my mom and she liked it for the most part but I still enjoyed it more.

The weather in HKG was overcast during the day and I was expecting sunny weather. Views of the tarmac and planes from gates 20-40 while I had my food.



Some photos and shops around Hong Kong Airport before the split of gate directions.







Gates 1-4, with a few shops, but not as many as the main terminal and gates 20-40, 15-19, and 40-70.





Departure board - Notice that CX870 is pretty much the only flight that is delayed. Even all other US flights departed on time and the weather was dry.



View of gates 20-40 taken from the food court upstairs.

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Because I had an extra hour to enjoy Hong Kong Airport due to the delayed flight, I also decided to walk around gates 60-80. There were quite a good number of shops but not as much as gates 20-40. In fact, the last time I walked around this side was when I took CX in 2009 (Back when they flew the 744 to SFO and CX872 had a late-afternoon departure rather than a redeye).

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Flight: Cathay Pacific Airways Flight CX870
Route: Hong Kong - San Francisco
Aircraft: B-KQS (Boeing 777-300ER, 4.4 years)
Livery: Old
Date of Departure: February 24 (1:20PM, delayed to 2:20PM), Arrival February
24 (9:25AM, delayed to 10:25AM)
Seat: 53A (Economy Class)
Configuration: 3-class (Business, Premium Economy, Economy) AKA 77K

Around 1PM, we proceed to our gate, do any last minute activities before boarding. I was very impressed and surprised my aircraft would have the old livery, which I enjoyed far more than the new livery. B-KQS was recently reconfigured as B77K in December 2018, a few weeks after I returned from my November trip. It also has Wifi, but I spent most of my time enjoying views and sleeping. Sources also indicate that some CX 77W, especially the younger birds will be reconfigured but not repainted.

This flight actually arrived from Mumbai as CX660, about 3.5 hours late which is one of the few reasons they delayed the flight by 1 hour. It's also possible that many people were making a connection to CX870 from Mumbai, going through security and heading back to the assigned gate for the aircraft.











Boarding commenced only at 2PM and as with all US bound flights on Cathay Pacific, there's a short interview and they mark your passport with a sticker and you're on your way. While boarding, two women were talking to a F/A about a concern but they blocked the line for about 5 minutes when we could have gotten into the aircraft. I settled into row 53A shortly after.





The captain made an announcement apologizing for the delay of the flight and a warm welcome onboard. The flight time would be 11.5 hours but it doesn't change the fact that our arrival would be delayed by 1 hour behind schedule. Shortly after, we pushed back and started our engines and it was a quick 10 minute taxi to the runway. We left the gate at 2:30PM and got to the runway around 2:50PM.

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After 10 minutes the seatbelt sign switched off and shortly we were served drinks and soon after, lunch an hour later. My lunch for this flight was basically a similar spinach pasta with vegetables which resembles the one I had from Hong Kong to Chennai when I took CX631 last week. The food was pretty good overall.



To finish off, we had ice cream. Initially, they wouldn't give it to vegetarian people (Neither Veg-lacto ovo or Indian Vegetarian of any kind). However, when the IFSM saw our interest, she actually offered my mom and I ice cream which was very nice of her. The swiss chocolate ice cream was delicious.





Next couple of pictures are very breathtaking views of the late afternoon and sunset. Because I slept, I didn't take much of a sunrise photo because I had already done so from Chennai to Hong Kong (plus the aircraft was the same though different config).

Late afternoon to evening view nearing Japan



The next few are absolutely breathtaking sunset views.







At this point, I closed the window shades, as advised by the crew and dozed off after taking a walk in the cabin. The seat was not too bad, and luckily (though I was not expecting), the guy sitting in front of me did not recline his seat. About 5 hours after the first meal, we were woken up to a second meal, which was a dinner because it was nighttime at Hong Kong. Again, it would be nice to give a breakfast 2 hours before arrival, but maybe their intention would be to make sure passengers are well fed and rested before arrival.

This meal was basically another pasta which had a lot of protein. Similarly my mom got a naan with paneer makhani which was really nice. I had a little bit of her's as well. Overall, the food was very good.

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With this meal service, I washed down with tea which was pretty good. Once the cabin lights darkened, I recorded and took pictures of the airshow as we were a few hours near SFO.

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Soon, we were greeted with a sunrise. I fell asleep during the actual sunrise sadly.





After sometime, the captain came with an update of our arrival into SFO and it would be sometime closer to 10:30AM, 1 hour later than usual. The weather descending into SFO was cloudy with small peaks of sun, just like what the weather was on the day I left SFO a week ago.



We started descending around 10:15AM and touched down in mostly cloudy weather around 10:30AM and only got to the gate about 15 minutes later.

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Overall impressions of the trip on Cathay Pacific for the second time?

For getting to India, it's one of the best and quickest choices in terms of saving time. The 10-across seating will be inevitable, but one thing I can attest to this was that on the return leg, the cabin was still comfortable enough for walking and the seat was relatively comfortable for sleeping. If you have someone recline, that's where the comfort level gets compromised. Not that I'm against it, but last trip this did not happen and this trip it only happened when I flew CX879.

The food for the most part for me was really good, so combining all my ratings of the food from all sectors, I would give it an 8.5/10. My parents for the most part also found the food more or less good, so same rating having also shared with them. In future Cathay Pacific trips (if any), for pilgrimages I will likely choose the Indian Vegetarian meal, but this meal is good too if you want some protein. Since my mom initially thought of switching to Oriental meal on the way back, she learned it's not the right fit for her on longhaul flights and generally enjoyed the Indian vegetarian meals to my understanding.

The service was better than last time in all sectors (Though last trip, some sectors, service was good, service was bad). Flight attendants were really attentive to people's needs throughout the flight and were very friendly in general.

All in all, the trip, though most of it has been for personal and religious reasons has turned out a lot better than last time. Nothing canceled, everything went well as expected and I'm really impressed.

The delays are inevitable, but I felt service on all legs was much better compared to last time where some service was good, some mediocre. Would give them a 9/10.

Would I fly CX again if I had the chance? Absolutely. Given the time and money saved, even if it means connecting at Chennai from international to domestic and vice versa, it's absolutely worth doing this as it is seamless. Now, I know CX may not arrive at a good time into parts of India, it's not terrible for domestic connections. It's certainly not terrible vice versa either. Sometimes my mom flies to India herself and though touches TRV only when alone, she has evaluated MAA is a great airport to connect if EK is expensive and when MI no longer flies there. It's just another way to force us to keep options open. SQ definitely if it's the cheapest but going to MAA would work, too.

I will definitely miss the 9-across 77W even on a short sector in the future if the need to fly Cathay Pacific exists, Chennai is getting it a few times a week and may eventually become a regular.

UPDATE as of 3/1: My dad has returned on Friday morning (3/1) and he got the 9-across B77W AKA B77G, B-KQQ (which last trip he got on CX870 from Hong Kong to San Francisco) on CX632 from Chennai to Hong Kong. For the most part he slept, but he declined the meal during service. On the next leg, back to SFO, on CX870, he got B-KQZ (the last plane in the KQ* series), which was 10-across B77W AKA B77K, but sported the old Cathay Pacific livery. No delays at all, but for the most part he slept but only had the second meal (dinner). For him both seats were more or less comfortable and this one, he was not delayed like my mom and I were. His flight actually left a few minutes late, and arrived a couple of minutes late, 10 minutes late in fact, almost identical to the time I arrived last time. I guess I could say it was a win-win for us coming back as we had the old livery on both legs while coming back.

Thanks for reading!! All comments and feedback are appreciated and anything I can do to make future TRs better, I will definitely take suggestions. I hope to visit India again in the future.