Journey to Pune

Hi everyone!! It's so lovely that I get the chance to record and share my experiences. I'm choosing to write this blog as a journal of sorts, so please excuse poor grammar as I probably am too busy to edit every post extensively.

The country is much more poor than I imagined. There is no internet access where I am staying so you may hear from me very infrequently (I'm using data). But I am doing well! My host family has way exceeded my expectations. They are incredibly kind and they have two children, ages about 4 and 2 with another on the way! The home is pretty clean and the monsoons haven't started yet so there aren't too many mosquitos yet (knock on wood).

The journey here was not as bad as I thought it would be either. It was a total of 18 hours in flights,  it I managed!! On the way to Paris, I sat next to another lone traveler, Savannah. I could not ask for a better person to spend a 6 hour flight with. We had so much to talk about; she was also doing a post graduate trek. Her expedition was a camping trip through the Saharah Desert by camel. Perhaps I should do that next...but I have been recently warned that camels like to spit, so that's probably going to be a hard no haha.

On the way to Mumbai (from Paris), I managed to make acquaintances with a 15 year old whom was also traveling to Mumbai. He so nicely woke me up when we were about to board because I otherwise would have slept right through!! (it was 3 am US time)....This flight was a little less welcoming as i was literally the only white person. I got checked out by a few disproving women and got tossed around from seat to seat. Initially when I approached my seat, the woman sitting next to me said she had one request and so I moved to another seat to accommodate her wishes to sit with her husband. As soon as I approached my new seat, another woman told me she had a request and I moved to yet another seat to accomodate her wishes to sit with her son. The family I ended up sitting next to unfortunately did not speak any English.

For my dad's reading pleasure...the plane from Paris to Mumbai smelt so bad that the flight attendants went up and down the aisles with air fresheners after we boarded!!
The ride from Mumbai to Pune took about 4 hours. I  have never seen such reckless driving before. For the Scadutos who went to Sicily this past summer, I imagine it was a lot like that. The driver drove anywhere he wanted to pass people and cut others off left and right. We even were driving the wrong way on a one way road!

Otherwise, everything has been going well and I will be starting work on Monday :) I'll do my best to post again soon.