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Published: March 23rd 2016
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So here we are on day one of my trip to India for my friend Khushbu's wedding and then to Dubai and Thailand.
When I left on Sunday night from Vegas it still did not feel real that I was headed to the other side of the world and wouldn't be "home" for the next two weeks. When thinking about it while sitting at the airport I got a little home-sick, partly because I was tired. And partly because my "home" situation has drastically changed recent and I am not sure how I feel about. I can get more into that later when I can better put into words how I feel.
The flight from vegas was fine. I got to New York at 8am and met up with my business partner Tim. I am glad he is traveling with me. I wouldn't have wanted to come here alone. We have fun together and he's a good friend that I can talk to. Even though I am worried about the business back.... just a little. We have facetime calls set up so we should be fine. 😊
Nothing exciting happened on the plane but we flew Emirates airlines
and it was pretty nice. We were in economy class but I think we will have enough miles to upgrade when we head back! Which will be fun. At the back of the plane there was a staircase that went "upstairs" to the first class area! I think there was a bar and sleeping rooms up there. It was kinda crazy. We are gonna try to be there next time. The flight wasn't full and there were three meal which was good. I only had one glass of wine. All of the flight attendants were from different countries. The guy we met was from Mexico but I could have sworn he was from France. The food on the plane was decent but I at the pepper in my rice dish and it burnt the sh*t out of my mouth! I wont do that again.
When we finally arrived it was almost surreal. We got through customs okay and headed out to baggage claim where I saw Indian Army soldiers walking around with rifles and also the police with pistols. It seemed a bit of an overkill with security but hey maybe not. Although I didn't particularly feel safe the
the Indian Soldiers carrying such big weapons at the airport. They don't look disciplined and I imagined that if there was an issue the would just start shooting everywhere.
We didn't have transportation set up from the airport so we had to get a cab and I didn't want to get ripped off. We went outside and this guy was like "Sir, do you need a taxi" and I was telling him we needed to go to a registered Taxi. He was claiming he was and was walking up to his car and he kept walking past the taxi stand and I kept asking him where is car was and he kept saying "over there over there." We then decided not to go with him and found an actual taxi driver. Who you will see a picture of! He was nice, his name was Rumbir. We are hopefully going to use him today to go shopping.
I wasn't surprise at the craziness of the traffic here because I have a lot of friends that are Indian, but no one drives in the lanes. People pass motorcyclists in the same lane. There are families of three riding the same
dirt bike. It is crazy! I can't help but think that all those people might not survive their next commute! The back of every car is dented from other cars tapping it when they stop. There are people walking in the middle of traffic selling toys and sugary candy. Women reaching out and grabbing at the candy. Cows were walking along side of the road. More horns were honking than in New York City. It was constant. Men riding bikes holding car tires in each hand. Bikes with big crates on the front carrying who knows what to who knows where. Everyone seemed to be in such a hurry! and there was no order to anything. But oddly I felt extremely confident in my taxi drivers ability to get us there safely.
Which, he did. We pulled up to the front of the hotel in an area of the city that looks a little impovreished. The puctures of the hotel made it seem very nice. But the pictures were misleading. Which is fine! We had an experience this first night. The guy at the front desk asked us if we liked WWE and who our favorite wrestler was. Tim
tried to tell them about Hulk Hogan. But they liked John Cena. They showed us to our room and gave us a bottle of water. I checked to make sure the water bottle hadn't been opened before. It hadn't so I drank it. We rested for about an hour since our traveling was over a 24 hours. We then went upstairs to the restaurant. All the lights were off and they then jumped up saying "we are open we are open." I noticed there was a terrace and we sat outside. There was one table on the whole thing and planted palm trees. It was actually kinda nice in a slums of india kinda of way.
We ordered butter chicken and chicken tikka masala and rice. It was so good! They also had beer so of course we had one! I know that is safe to drink. Haha. I asked the worker to take our picture and he kept telling us to get closer and closer. I was like "that is okay." He also took the photo at an angle! It was really cute. He took the picture then walked away and came back and asked to have a
picture with Tim and then wanted me in it! The other guy then asked to be in the picture. So we took a photo shoot out on the terrace. I was still so tired and it was getting weird with the guys hanging around wanting our picture. We then went back and sat in Tim's room laughing about the whole experience and realized that they probably have not seen americans here. We felt pretty humbled. Then there was a knock on the door and it was a different guy bringing us toilet paper for the second time just to talk to us! He asked us where we were from and when we said US he said "Thats a good country" haha. It took a second of talking to him to get him to leave.
We realized we should probably switch hotels. So, tonight we are going to a new hotel. 😊
I'm off to go have breakfast and get in a cab to go to the new hotel! I will write later. xoxo
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