@nerd_in_rage -- we originally started with purely text as an approach. You can see one of our older blog posts here where we talk about the simplicity and clarity afforded by "Just use text": http://blog.cleartrip.com/2007/03/10/a-picture-says-a-thousa...

Over time, however, we changed our minds a little bit. And we were driven, in no small part, by the rapid shift to web consumption on post-PC devices. We explained our thinking in another blog post:

http://blog.cleartrip.com/2011/01/20/testing-an-all-new-navi...

There's really something to this. The original symbols needed to be universally understood because they were intended to be used on signs, which are obviously a static medium. The web and apps can be tailored to the observer's language preference. Maybe a universal symbol isn't necessary here.