Traveling To India: Expectations Pleasantly Unmet

Before departing on this journey of mine I heard a lot of horror stories and had a lot of worries. One of the bigger ones was how painful the dreaded 15 plus hours of travel would be. Fortunately it was a fairly pleasant experience as far as traveling goes. Emirates Airlines, which we took for both flights including a twelve and a half hour flight from JFK to Dubai has to be one of the tops in the world. I know for a fact (because the screen in front of me told me so many times) that they have an award winning entertainment system (why there are awards for airline entertainment systems I don't know...but I digress). They also had many other cool features I'd never seen on an airline. It has to be the number one airline for small children, not only did they hand out baby food but they also had several small trinkets for children including coloring books, backpacks, and stuffed hand puppets. Also Emirates air has its own in flight duty free shop in which you can shop by catalogue from your seat and purchase things directly from the flight attendants as easily as you can get a coke or an in flight meal. Another interesting aspect of the flight was the ceiling of the aisle which, when the lights were dimmed, lit up like a starscape and even simulated a sunrise with lights as the lights came back up. Finally, as part of the entertainment system there are cameras situated at the nose of the plane facing forward and at the bottom of the plane pointing downwards which we could view on our screens at any time. Granted the views they offered were clouds for 99% of the trip and quite dizzying at points during take-off and landing but it was a cool concept nonetheless.

Before leaving many people, including my Professor Denise, warned me about the Mumbai and Dubai airports. I heard all kinds of stories about how they would be very crowded and difficult and one friend told me that in the Dubai airport it would be common to see armed teenagers in street clothes as part of a not-so-organized army or something. This was not so. The Dubai airport was as clean, sophisticated and modern as any airport I've seen. There was a huge duty free store, several coffee shops, and even a special lounge for unaccompanied minors with Xboxes (lucky little bastards). Also it was not very crowded. However I was sure, after all of Denise's horror stories that I would be hit by the wave of Indians I was promised upon landing in Mumbai, all of them offering to take my bags and be my tour guide. Again, this was in no way true. Perhaps several years ago the Mumbai airport was like this but when we landed it was very modern (though not as nice or fancy as most airports I've been to) and not crowded at all. I thought that we would at least experience a rush around baggage claim but in fact it felt like our airplane was the only at the airport at that time. We got our bags pretty easily, exchanged some travelers checks and met with Denise as soon as we exited the front doors.

Denise, along with her friend Joy drove us from the airport to ADAPT, where we are staying. The traffic (though I understand we hit an uncommonly mild period of it) was very mild. We saw some auto-rickshaws and a fender bender across the highway with people outside of the cars affected arguing. We got to ADAPT without trouble and were promptly shown to our rooms and allowed time to breathe and unpack. I never got a clear description of ADAPT before coming so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. It is a large, rectangular building with two quads and four floors. The first two floors consist of the school for the disabled and its offices, the third floor is like a hostel with several, small, dorm-like rooms and a canteen where breakfast and dinner are served and on the top floor are nicer apartments where Denise is living.

My room is not bad overall, I've got a balcony with a nice view of the street we're on, my own bathroom with a western toilet (huge) a bed, a desk and a closet that locks. However, it is no five star hotel. All of the beds here are very stiff wood with very thin mattresses (good for the back I guess but I sleep on my side). My shower is very strange. It is not in it's own shower area but just open in the bathroom with a big faucet and a shower head, a large bucket, a normal bucket and two big cups. From what I've gathered people take bucket-bathes here in which they fill the bucket and use the cups to pour water on themselves as needed. It saves water but it's about as sanitary, if not less, than, well, a bath. I've been using the shower to get wet, but because it has almost no pressure I then fill the cup using the shower head and dump it on myself to wash off soap and shampoo. Also air conditioning is not particularly common here though it has been in all of the nicer shops and restaurants we've been to so far. However in our room we have only our fans to rely on. Granted the fans here go up to 5, in which they whir at what is probably double the speed of american ceiling fans but still is just enough to keep me from getting any sweatier and not quite enough to really keep me cool unless I'm right under it (though I am a sweater). Once monsoon season starts (which is literally any minute now) bugs will be rampant and we probably will have to start closing our windows around 6 pm, though for now it has been bearable. That's probable the best way to sum up my first few hours in India; new, not entirely what I was led to expect, but bearable.




Would you know what to make of this?

Despite how crazy my travels have been already, easily the weirdest thing to happen so far occured as soon as I sat down for my twelve and a half hour flight to Dubai. I immediately noticed that the man sitting next to me, whom I believe was Japanese and sort of resembled Kim Jong Il, had a mole on his neck with ridiculously long hairs growing out of it. Check it out: