Here's some of what's happened so far:
Flew into Mumbai on Saturday in business class (Delta). Never flew BC before, and I probably wouldn't shell out the extra $$ of my own, but it certainly was nice accomodations. I had my own "pod". It had a chair that could recline all the way to horizontal. Champagne, food whenever, etc. No alcohol for me. Also skipped dinner and tried to sleep right away and managed to get 6 hrs on the plane. Yay! Had my own boob tube and watched quite a bit of HBO series I don't get at home. Big Love is excellent. Tempted to get HBO at home for that. Also watched some Entourage.
I was forewarned about "running the gauntlet" when getting out of the airport. After flight you go through customs, baggage claim, etc. All that was a breeze. When you walk out of the airport there is a boardwalk with railings on both sides, behind which 100s of Indians are waiting to either take you to your hotel, or try to scam you out of a few bucks (by offering to carry your bags and then demand $5-10 to give them back to you). Nothing like that happened to me. There was a placard with my name misspelled (Stuart Dawnoing) I found them, they took me to the hotel car, and 10 minutes later I was in a luxury hotel. So the gauntlet turned out to be no problem.
Hotel was nice. Each floor theme decorated. Mine was rainforest. Others were ocean, fire, etc. Got wireless net up ($2/half hr) and e-mailed home, Skyped Crash, Jeanne and Eric in San Francisco. Stayed up until 2AM India time (4:30PM EDT) and managed to sleep another 6 hours. No big jet lag problems yet.
Had complimentary hotel breakfast (Indian food) and read the paper. I chose not to exchange dollars to rupees at the airport or hotel because of the 10% cut, but that probably would have been worth it. I was about to get my first taste of real India and dose of culture shock. I decided to walk 3 blocks to the nearest ATM to get cash.
More on that in my next post.
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