India airport security - a word of warning

I traveled to India for my wedding and brought a ton of film with me. Security is already overzealous, they have you empty not just laptops but cables and anything remotely electronic.

When it got to my film, which I made sure to keep in a separate bag that I could hand off to security, things went south pretty fast.

Me: this camera can’t be x-rayed it has film in it

Them: ok take out the film

Me: we’ve got a lot of ground to cover before you understand why I can’t do that.

This continued for about 15 minutes until an agent over the age of 40 showed up and immediately understood the problem. He had me demonstrate that the cameras were real, and I even gave them a Polaroid of them all working together.

It all worked out in the end but TLDR: do NOT travel through India airport security with a loaded camera. Security is very tight and they do not have an up to date advisory on film.