Saturday, April 16, 2011

Dubai and other travels

It's been a while since I blogged about our life in India. We have a routine down and things aren't so surprising to us anymore. We've been very busy with travel and visitors- we have visited the Chennai airport way too many times. January was our calm before the storm, although we did have some visitors. My cousin made a business trip to Chennai so we saw him for breakfast one day. Plus one of the women from my team at work was here. 




I visited the US in February and the UK in March for work. Also in March we spent a weekend in Mysore visiting my aunt who was working there for a month. It was fun to see her here and nice for Mr. R to see an Indian city other than Chennai.


At the end of March Mr. R and I went to Dubai to do our "get out of Chennai and shop" routine. Which consisted mostly of window shopping in malls, enjoying the order of the streets, and stocking up on a few groceries. Then Dad and J joined us and we did a little more shopping! It was cool to be there with Dad. When he and I were in Morocco in 2009 we had set Dubai as our next destination. It's always good to carry through on those wish-listy plans.


Dubai is crazy with skyscrapers, ultra-luxurious hotels, and malls containing every designer store you can name plus sights such as an indoor ski hill (seriously!), aquarium, huge Vegas-style fountains (this is a desert, isn't it?), and indoor skating rinks. And the food! We must have eaten 2 quarts of hummus.




With that Mr. R was off to Chennai to hold down the fort while Dad, J and I ventured on to Delhi. Yes, Delhi. Apparently only Americans refer to it as New Delhi (which I think is just a section of Delhi which was built by the Brits).We arrived in the evening, were met at the airport by a car and driver I had pre-booked, and taken to the Hilton hotel. We settled in and Dad wanted to go exploring. It was after dark and we had to get up early the next morning so we set off on foot to a "mall" next door. It was really sort of an outdoor mall set around a courtyard with food and small crafts stalls. But it gave Dad and J a taste of India.


Next morning we were up early for a 6:15 AM train to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. Our driver had some confusion about which train station he was supposed to take us to and, sure enough, we discovered too late that we were at the wrong station. It was crazy at the station and none of the people behind the counter could help me. But we saw two Brits who looked like they knew what they were doing and glommed on to them. It was a father and son who do a lot of travel in India and they graciously helped us buy tickets on the train to Agra that left from that station. I was really nervous as I had purchased tickets of the 1st class air conditioned car and we were only able to get 3rd class, non-air-conditioned, non-reserved seats. But we ended up being just fine and had a pleasant 3 hour ride to Agra. The hotel had sent us with bags of food for breakfast so we ate and chatted with the Brits.


At the Agra station we were met by another driver, and then connected with a tour guide who had been referred to me by a co-worker. I won't bore you with the details of the Taj Mahal- that's what Google is for. But I will tell you we spent about two hours there and got some really good insights and a bit of Indian history from our guide. After our tour we headed to a nice hotel for lunch. We had some hours to kill before our train back to Delhi so we sat in the sun and read and Dad napped in the lobby for a bit. Then we headed off for drinks to a very luxurious hotel that has gorgeous views of the Taj Mahal. We sat in the very posh bar and had snacks and drinks while we watched the setting sun shine on the monument. Then we were off to the station. This time we got the right train and sat in a/c comfort and were served dinner. J and Dad napped undisturbed in the quiet car.

Next morning we were off for an early flight to Chennai. More on that later.

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