Culture Shock

Greetings from India, Avid Reader! It's 2AM here in Mumbai; I'm now settled in to my hotel room after a day of serious travel. My dear friend Jesse Paulson picked me up at 10AM for what became two 10-hour flights to get me to this place at this time (it's now 12:30PM in Seattle, I believe). I'm exhausted.

And I'm also culture shocked. I figured Mumbai would be hot and crowded and a world completely different from what I know. (WARNING: significant generalization pending...) My expectations couldn't have been more off. Yes, Avid Reader, it's *that* much more different than I expected. Now, granted, I've only seen the arrivals queue at the airport and a 20-min. taxi ride to the hotel, but still. This is going to be a wacky week!

A couple of notes before I crash from being so tired (and the effects of a sleeping pill)...

Here I thought that arriving in Mumbai at midnight would mean a quiet evening at the airport. WRONG-O! There must have been 300-500 people waiting for arriving passengers; there were THRONGS of people holding signs for rides and others just waiting. Horns honking, parking "lots" all over the place -- filled with people sleeping in the road, beggars hoping to score a rupee, bikes, cabs, mayhem. It could have been any time of day -- it just happened to be dark and cool (82 degrees).

We drove through what looked like post-Apocalypic Aurora Avenuex10. What looked like abandoned apartment buildings and metal sheds were actually homes. More "homes" were simply blankets on the either side of the street.

While I completely trusted my cabbie, at one point after driving through what I could consider slums and taking a left hand turn into a scene from 'The Outsiders', I was nearly sure I was about to me taken somewhere dark where mysterious deaths are the norm. Instead, another left not 100 yards down the unlit road and VOILA -- this beacon of a hotel! Whereby we had to stop to have the car inspected by three bomb officials. Whereby I was greeted by a score of hotel staff, including the front desk clerk who walked me through the building, up the stairs, and to my room. Whereby I had to pass through a metal detector just to get in in the first place.

Avid Reader, this is crazy. Something I've never seen before... and I've only seen maybe an hour of it so far. I look forward to more stories to share... which will mean more adventures for me to have and tales to tell!