THE TRIP's PREPARATION
I started the preparation of the trip with the intent of only taking one bag. This is not cosmically possible for a member of a large Indian community full of people who like to "smuggle" durable goods through the use of other innocent passenger's luggage. I ended up taking 4 bags. Although, true to form as parents do worry … my mom and dad decided to pack a HUGE mini pharmacy and utility shop for us to take. It was probably half the weight of my bag.
I figured I'd just try to sell all the stuff on the streets in India so I took it. (ahhem ... excuse me while I make it sound like I had a choice in taking all that stuff). But as you will read later ... this small pharmacy and utility shop become very handy on the trip and was actually used more by Srin and Ramesh than myself. Thanks Mom and Dad!
So to the trip. This is an adventure among 3 friends: Srin, Ramesh, and I. We all attended GT together. Srin and Ramesh both earned their PhD's from Tech and after graduation, Srin who is from Michigan moved to DC to work with the FDA and Ramesh who is from India moved to Bombay to become a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology. I currently still live in Atlanta and recently started my PhD.
Ramesh is now getting married. So this trip was planned to experience a bit of India before attending the wedding as a way of celebrating Ramesh and our friendship. The plan is to travel for 2 weeks across Northern India including a trip to the foothills of the Himalayas.
Although being from the states, I go to India quite frequently as I still have lots of family there. From a very young age, my parents took us fairly frequently and so I had been visiting India probably averaging every 3 years or so. But every time I've gone ... I've only gone to where my family lives in Gujarat (Navsari area). I've actually never traveled around and this is going to be my first time traveling around in the motherland.
ARRIVAL
One of the highlights of the trip is supposed to be a trip to Sikkim (foothills of the Himalayas). It is a special protected area so I need a special permit to go there. I am supposed to be able to get the permit from the Bombay airport. So, upon arrival and before I exited the airport I acquired it at some tourist counter inside. Upon exiting the airport (no re-entry), I was reading the permit I just paid 300 rupees for. It was a liquor license instead of the Sikkim entry permit I needed! I was ripped off within the first two hours in India! Go figure.
Ramesh (getting married) had come to pick me up. Prior to my arrival, we had never actually discussed that I will be bringing 4 bags (of smuggled goods) so he was not prepared and didn't have a car waiting for us. Oh well ... there are plenty of taxis around ... its Bombay! There were like 500 taxis around the airport. We went to the first taxi and they say no, we go to the second taxi and they say no, the third ... no. It turned out they only take people who have prepaid permits from the taxi stand INSIDE the airport. No one would give us a ride!
So imagine two guys running around the streets near the airport in Bombay with my 4 bags and newly granted liquor license in the drenched in sweat due to the summer humidity looking for a taxi. We eventually found a rickshaw driver who would take us thanks to some expert negotiating by Ramesh. If he wasn't going to take us, I had planned on bribing someone with my unwanted liquor license!
We were so excited to finally grab a taxi that we failed to realize that we now have a task of fitting 4 large luggage bags with 2 people in the back of a tiny 3 wheel rickshaw. It took us forever to find the taxi and did not want to let it go sooooo .... my definition of "stuffed" was redefined!
So to recap, within the first 2 hours of landing in Bombay ... I was ripped off, was almost part of a bribery, and was stuffed like a sardine. Any type of laziness can be cured in the streets of India!
Ramesh and his brother are great cooks! After all that, the food at Ramesh's place was all worth it!!
So the journey begins!
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