Gigi's Hideaway: Travel, travel, and more travel!

Travel, travel and more travel!

Today's update will be brief. We flew out of Chennai this morning and landed safely in Mumbai. I will say that rush hour in Chennai (both arriving the night before and leaving this am), is like NOTHING any of us have ever seen. It's bad India traffic on steroids! It took us an hour and 15 minutes to go .6 miles. Totally whacky.

When we got to Mumbai today, we stopped for lunch at a hotel, but the restaurant was full, so they put us up in one of their rooms and ordered room service for us! Hilarious. I couldn't tell if that was five star service or please don't go we want your business. It was actually kind of nice to have lunch by ourselves. (Butter chicken with Naan bread.... our standard order!). We did some hilarious bonding in that room, we did.

After lunch we hopped back in our home on wheels (a different one, yet again), and headed straight north for Nashik. When they say 4 hours, we've gotten wise-- they mean 6. After driving through Mumbai (truly the filthiest place on God's earth, those poor people!), it became a pleasant surprise to actually ENJOY the scenery the farther north we went. At one point it almost looked like a harsher version of Ireland but then we found ourselves heading up a mountain which made RaeAnn come out of her seat. "We're in the clouds! We're in the clouds!" Fog- clouds; same thing, right?

Once we got to our hotel the evening became a complete circus with room swapping and Prati having no part of the "stink" of the halls. After she found out IGL had paid up front for 3 nights and we couldn't leave, we tried MORE rooms on a different floor. We got to the rooms just as the bellmen were frantically spraying this potion that smelled like a mixture of bug spray and Great Grandma's Essence of Rose Parfume. A deadly combo. We were all stressed to the max (especially after staying in super nice hotels the past 2 nights), but Belinda broke the ice and put everyone in uproarious laughter when she stood up to follow the bellman to her room and her punjabi pants fell down!! Total comic relief. Good thing she's short; her top covered most of the action. She must have caught them with her knees because she just got this sick look on her face, let out a simple Kentucky "Oh my!" and stood frozen like a school girl about to pee her pants. The rest of the night went downhill from there.

The only redeeming part of the day is that we get to sleep in tomorrow. We don't have to leave for the conference til 9:30. (Maybe 10:30, depending on "How the women are gathering"). May they be slow to gather!

Pictures tonight will be random.

Enjoy!

Check out the people hanging off the bus