Needing to fly from Kolkata down to Bhubaneswar means braving the domestic air terminal in Kolkata. It’s certainly an experience.

Only slightly more substantial than a cattle shed the processes you have to go through are chaotic and confusing to say the least.

First challenge is to actually get into the airport departure terminal. All cars, taxis and any other transport jostle for access to four parking lanes in front of the terminal. Then it is down to the individual to navigate with luggage through taxis and horns blaring. Once at the doors (which when I arrived were broken – electric doors were tight shut and not budging until a little man prised them apart and crawled through) you have to show your flight details and have your bags prodded.

Stage two once in the hall is to then figure out where the hell the actual check in desks are. Of course you are also supposed to know that all bags to be checked in need to be x rayed before going to the check in desk.

Stage three is to realise that as a woman, all the men check in first by pushing in.

By this stage I’m doing well, checked in, bags deposited and time to go through to the departure gate. The picture is just one of the long winding queues to get through security. It turns out that once near the front you are separated. Women to the middle scanners, men to either side.

As women we have to place all bags onto the usual conveyor belt then queue to wait to be called behind a very grubby curtain. Equally here it seems that western women are low on the pecking order as at least 10 women pushed me out of the way to queue.

So, standing in a long closely packed (no personal space issues here) queue for the curtain I watches my luggage get scanned and passed to the other side and could do nothing about it.

Finally I reached the curtain to meet Mrs Happy. Oh my. Apparently you are supposed to hold your boarding pass so she can frisk you and stamp it. Of course no signs tell you this nugget of info. So instead, mrs happy here shouts at me, points back to the queue and makes me leave the curtain.

Great. Bags are the other side as is boarding pass and I’m back to the start. So an argument ensues between the male scanner supervisor and mrs happy. She clearly has one job to do and will do it to the letter. After being barked at by her boss she begrudgingly let me into the curtain and performed the scan with military precision and the odd annoyed whack with the electronic paddle for good measure. What an experience, but hey I thought it’s done now, collected my bag and wandered off to find the gate.

10 minutes later her boss comes to find me and did a very formal “Come with me”. You guessed it, back to Mrs Happy and the curtain. I still needed to have the boarding pass stamped. And boy did she moan- of course, I couldn’t understand a word of it so instead I did an awfully British thank you instead for good measure, which certainly seemed to annoy her further.

So at least I now know what to do on the return journey!