Tuesday 5 April 2011

Arrival and Day 1: Joe

Steph and I are simultaneously blogging about our India experience.  She's much more verbose than I am, so I'm going to try to keep it nice and brief.  Here it goes:

So, we leave on Friday at 9 PM, and we don't end up getting there until Sunday at 7 AM -- this boils down to a whole lot of time up in the air, and losing a whole bunch of time by changing time zones.  If you didn't already know this about me, I'm deathly afraid of flying.  It's irrational, I know, but I can't stop thinking that I'm going to die at every next second.  LUCKILY, there's a cure for that.  Alcohol.  I was pretty buzzed by the time I got on the first plane to Munich, and that helped a deal.  Unfortunately, I didn't sleep at all.  Nor was I able to get much sleep during the layover.  I felt like a post-call zombie. LUCKILY, there's a cure for that too.  Yup, you guessed it.  The second flight was pretty uneventful, needless to say we got to India eventually.

So now we get there and past customs, and then some nice Indian man spots us and directs us to his car.  As we pulled out onto the street and into traffic, I could only think of one thing -- shit just got real -- and it kept going on repeat.  And to think that I thought that flying was scary?  I could actually die on the streets here.
We made it, by some stroke of good fortune, to our first destination: some beat up hostel next to an eye clinic.  We were given a room and a few hours to rest before we had to eat and get to the train for Dehradun.  Holy cow, I passed out.  I'm also really glad that we brought sheet-sacks to sleep in -- the upkeep for the beds here is not stellar.

The train ride was awesome, except that I didn't get to ride with Steph (she was in a different cabin).  The sites were beautiful and breath-taking, and yet, they were filled with a poverty that I had previously never seen.  Occassionally there would be the equivalent of a septic sewage river that would run parallel to the train -- brimstone doesn't have shit on the smell of that.  It took about 6 hours and then we got to our homestay. I had about 4 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours, so after a brief introduction to the family, I passed the hell out.

I could say a lot more, but I won't.  Stay tuned for info about the homestay and clinics.

2 comments:

  1. "shit just got real"

    awesome dude haha

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  2. Reality has a way of smacking you right in the face. Enjoy, no, "embrace" your visit. If you make a real friend they will invite you for a meal. DO NOT DECLINE.

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