Cayley – starting out the trip
05/20/2009
I've had intentions of sitting down and writing down the events of the past week, but somehow writing only a few emails at a time in the hot, sweaty internet cafe seems likely. But NOW I am committed to writing a lengthy entry with lots of sweaty, detailed and delicious details of the first week here in India!
So I got to Delhi last Wednesday night around 11pm, great time to fly into a crazy country like India when your REAL jet-lagged. Luckily we found our taxi ride to the hotel (pronounced HO-tul in Hinglish) and managed to get about 5 hours of sort-of sleep. We explored Delhi the next day, got really exhausted and took the night train to Udaipur. That was a little sketch because we didn't realize until 20 minutes before boarding that we were actually WAIT LISTED and didn't have confirmed seats (great job on my part, "group leader"). I felt like a real loser then, screwing everyone over. LUCKILY three of us were confirmed since the online attempt to book the seats and we had 3/4 of the seats we needed. We went to the cabin hoping that maybe, just maybe, the fourth would be open. To our luck, we had to share the cabin with a 50 year old strange man. He ended up being really nice, but no matter how nice he was, it was a little irritating... nonetheless! We safely arrived to Udaipur and made it to our swank hotel on a nearly dried-up (but still beautiful) lake in the city. "Hotel Natural" as it's called, has proved to be probably the best place we could have found 9,000 miles from home over the internet. We got really lucky.
Our group has a lot of chemistry and we really get along great. We've had a really great great time together. It seems like we are joking about something every 5 minutes, which is great when you're trying to adjust to difficult weather, not to mention the first phases of culture shock.
In short, we've gotten really used to the city over the past 5 days and feel pretty comfortable. Getting over the jet lag and getting a little, tiny bit used to the heat has made a HUGE difference. I feel like I've been here for months, which is kind of surreal.
Thing I love most thus far: waking up the water buffalos outside our window in the morning. They like to hang out in the water and roam during the day. They're real cute.
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