India

Well, Mom and I are in India now. Mhari and John will join us after her MRI scan in a couple of weeks. We are very excited even though the first day was hard. We had to wake up a 4:30 to drive to Heathrow, and then we spent nine hours on a flight. The flight was about as good as it gets when on a plane for nine hours in Economy class. We got blankets, entertainment systems with movies, tv, and video games, as well as two meals. For the first meal they had run out of chicken curry so I got the First class prawn(shrimp) curry. It was very good. 

When we got off our flight in Mumbai it was 1:00am due to the time change. It took an hour or so to get our luggage and after that a worker at the hotels desk said that he did not think that there was a shuttle bus to our hotel (they had promised one). So we went outside to look. Luckily there was a man waiting with a sign for “Mr Lesley Ball”. 

On the way to the hotel I just sat watching in complete shock, culture shock that is. Despite being 2:00am there were people everywhere, sitting around fires, sleeping on the streets or slowly wandering through the road, unaware of the cars weaving around them. There were stray dogs everywhere, although they were not aggressive at all. I watched them wander up to strangers sniff them then walk away, and people would just ignore them and continue doing whatever they doing. And I still do not know how one makes a living as an auto-rickshaw driver because it seems everyone owns one. I must have seen a couple thousand during that 15 minute drive. 

Before our trip people were all saying how hectic the driving was in India. But it was not that bad on some major roads. They even have lanes marked! (although they didn't really use them) Also, a couple of times I saw people using turning signals! At our hotel we bought an internet card so we could e-mail. But when I scratched off the silver bit (like a scratch and win) to uncover the code, It also scratched off the number! The following morning I showered under the shower which is more powerful than Niagra falls, had breakfast at the hotels breakfast buffet (I never thought I would see cornflakes right beside dahl in a buffet) and went to the airport to get our next flight to Trivandrum in the south of India. We are now sitting on our flight way above India. Today I learned, while reading the paper, that last year in the state of Maharashtra, the number of car crashes have gone down by a huge amount this year, in 2010 there were only 65,000! Gone down from 72,000 the year before.

Mumbai fun fact

The population density in Mumbai is 29 000 people per square km. 

In Manitoba, it is 1.5 people per square km.  What a difference.