India....?

I'm in India... don't ask how I got here. Or where I've been. I'm not sure I know myself. It's been about three months since my last entry and most of you just gave up following me. I get that, but here I am drunken with jet lag in the middle of India wondering how cows became a staple feature in the afternoon rush hour. Seriously.

I arrived this morning courtesy of a trip I won through British Airways. My business brought me here - it won the contest. Kind of a boring story, but BA was looking to help small business grow internationally by flying them out to have face to face meetings with their international partners. I applied, they liked my gig and now I'm eating curry for breakfast.

It's all good timing though and probably the push I needed. The Central American trip just kicked my butt - tougher than I thought and super exhausting. Travelling solo, being constantly on the move and covering hundreds of miles can be toxic. Throw in a few extra unexpected problems and that wristband beach resort doesn't sound so hideous after all. Truth is, it took me the rest of the summer to get back on my feet. Just need to get over the final hurdle now and what can be more therapuetic that landing in the chaos of Delhi?

Luckily, the terms of the prize allowed me a travel buddy, so I recruited my friend Federico. Known him for a few years and he's been helping me with some webstuff, so figured this was a good way to say thanks. Plus he's good fun and the only person out there who can actually take off for three weeks on short notice. See, I applied an hour before the deadline, was told I won the middle of last month and left a week ago. We spent seven in London and never really adjusted to UK time before getting here. Guess I'm now ten hours ahead of the US? The flight was nine hours, overnight, the city just lost power (thank dog this computer lab has a generator) and two plus two doesn't seem to equal four anymore.... my space time mathematical continuim is all kinds of screwed up.

So we landed this morning in a 92 degree soup of smoggy humidity. (I only brought jeans - whoops.) I can't even figure out how to describe this place either. Frantic chaos? I mean we took a cab from the airport to our hotel. The driver goes along a four lane highway at top speed, but nobody pays attention to the lane markers, so it becomes six or seven lanes as cars straddle the lines and lanesplit like motorcycles. We witness an accident and the tow truck pulling a car away. It looked like an old yellow tonka truck and it just dragged the wreck sparking and smoking down the highway by a single piece of rope. We get off the highway and enter morning rush hour, battling it out with buses, tuk-tuks, rickshaws, and carts pulled by bikes, manpower, cows or elephants all ramming each other without care. (And don't forget the holy cow who decides to take a nap in the middle of the vehicular mess.) It's scary when you realize you need to hire a taxi just to pick you up do a u-turn and drop you on the other side of the street.

Buildings, alleys and people are just as manic. Fed got freaked out by the original hotel we booked and insisted we go to a different place. Fine by me and he pulled great deal - something to be said for not going solo. The guy's got an advantage though. He's born and raised Connecticut, but his family is from Peru - over here he looks native. It's working both for and against us. People talk to him in Hindi and taxis give us local rates, but then people look at me like I'm some kind of Euro-Yankee Sugar Momma..... except I'm broke and bed sharing just isn't our thing.
The other thing is how much the locals are fascinated by white people. Kinda surprising when you remember India is a former British colony - I woulda thought they'd had enough of us. Either way, I've already posed with six random people who found me more interesting than the local tourist attractions.... ??? I always wanted to be popular.

Will try to get some pics posted tomorrow and promise to never complain about I-95 again..