India Arrival

I’ve been here now for 2.5 (sorta) days, so time to catch everyone up on what’s gone down with some phat platitudes:

Flying to India takes a long time. The other three Peek India MAPpers and I counted things up and realized it took us 36 hours to go from door to door — Ann Arbor apartments to our Bangalore guest house. Before I left I had planned to do a diary of my extended time on three flights, but afterwards I’m glad I forgot, because after I got to my Chicago layover and had a nice chance to hang with The Wife for a few hours, this is pretty much the extent of it:

• First four hours from O’Hare to Frankfurt: Try and fail to sleep, then briefly succeed.
• Next two hours: continue reading Freedom at Midnight.
• Final 1.5 hours: Watch Bridge on the River Kwai; get mad when it’s interrupted by landing.
• First 5.5 hours of flight to Mumbai after 1.5 hours in Frankfurt: Finish Bridge; watch The Longest Day to continue random WWII movie marathon.
• Next 2.5 hours: Try and fail to sleep; land in Mumbai at 5 a.m. local time.
• Next 3 hours: Deal with Mumbai airport bureaucracy; get waved through security for no apparent reason while other teammates get scanned; eat samosas with ketchup for breakfast; board flight to Bangalore.
• 36 hours from start: Get to Bangalore house at noon local time; eat food in jet-lagged daze.

Traffic in India is something else. Nobody really respects lanes here and honking is constant, but somehow everyone seems to get to their destination. Crossing the street though is like playing Frogger with your life. Fun! My secret is finding some Indian person going where I want to go, then letting them play fullback-in-a-sari as I run for a TD to the other side of the street.

Still getting used to eating Indian food three times per day. I haven’t had the traveler’s curse, although I will euphemistically say that my system is a little confused.

The apartment is nice, but I look forward to getting out more. We’re still getting settled and starting our project work, so so far there hasn’t been much touring around. But I’ll have more interesting stuff to say soon, for real.

Though this will say posted at 11:20 p.m., in reality here it’s 9:50 a.m. 10.5 hours from EST — you’re ending your day while I’m starting mine.

Alright, keep it real until next time. Later.