First Impressions...

I’ve now been in India for just over 24 hours.  Here are some of my thoughts thus far:

Holy ****, there’s too many people waiting outside the airport for 2:30 AM!

It’s 50 degrees out.  What are you guys doing wearing jackets and scarves?

I’m the only one wearing a T-shirt, way to blend in, Ryan.

What is this heavenly food you call a Dosa?  It tastes like clouds and unicorns!!!

Landed in Cochin at 9:30, now I just have to make it through half of the day before passing out.

It’s hot, very hot.

Ooh I have a private driver picking me up from the airport, how fancy!

Umm this is a two-way road, why are there 4 cars all going the same way.

Ahh!  There’s no such thing as rules or lanes on Indian roadways!

Made it!

 So I landed in Delhi Airport around 2:30 AM local time, and was promptly overwhelmed by the number of people waiting outside.  I knew I had to go through that crowd eventually, so I ducked my head and b-lined it for the bus that would take me to the other terminal for domestic transfers.

I then flew from Delhi to Cochin and landed there at 9:30 AM local time, and this time I was overwhelmed by the heat and humidity.  Luckily, my program director Sunny arranged for his private driver, Mr. Shaji, to pick me up from the airport at Cochin.

It was probably less than 70 miles from the Cochin airport to Sunny’s house in Kottayam, but the drive took about 3 hours.  Despite my complete lack of sleep in the previous 24 hours, I was still quite able to stay wide awake for every one of those 3 hours.

Kerala (the state of India where I will be for these first couple of weeks) doesn’t exactly have a highway system like we do in the U.S., so we took small two-lane roads the entire way.  This results in severely overcrowded roads.  Sidewalks are also seldom to be seen, which just adds hundreds of people walking through the streets as well.  The only real way to describe the roads here is organized chaos. 

You can visualize driving in India if you’ve ever played the game Crazy Taxi.  You see a gap? Take it.  Only room for one car in this lane? Let’s make it three.  No passing zone? That doesn’t exist here.  It was a free-for-all on those roads.  Every small chance had to be taken otherwise you wouldn’t get anywhere.

We finally arrived around noon to Sunny’s residence, which is absolutely beautiful!  I had some lunch and coffee, and promptly passed out for 5 hours.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to enjoy this beautiful sunrise!