Mar 7, 2011 Were almost getting to the real India. Almost, I promise. Im tempted to start my blog with the negatives of India, because there surely are many negatives. Instead, Ill go chronologically as things happened. This morning I packed up my backpack and got ready to leave with a SAS group in which I knew no one. For those of you at home who know how shy I am, youll know how much I was freaking out about that. I met up with the group and it was full of nice people, but not necessarily people I will remain friends with- Ill just leave it at that. We set off on a bus for the Chennai airport, and after about an hours ride we arrived at the strangest airport Ive ever seen. For one, theyre currently doing construction on the entire outside of the airport yet it is still in use. In order to get to the gate, we had to walk through the construction zone. The bathrooms were nothing but simple holes in the ground, which have actually become preferable to me because it seems a lot cleaner than sitting on some raunchy toilet seat, just sayin. We boarded a nice place (TVs!) and had a 2 and a half hour plane ride to Dehli. We then boarded a bus for an hour-long drive to our hotel. Dehli is a city in India that I had not been expecting. The areas we were in, at least, were clean and beautiful they couldve been in Florida for all I knew. Looking out the window I just kept thinking that this was not the real India- where were the smells and the visible poverty that SAS had been warning us about? But I soon realized that we werent seeing that because we were staying in the diplomatic area of the city. We were near all of the foreign embassies and the homes of the prime minister and president. The hotel we were staying at was amazing. It was called the Hotel Ashok, and upon entrance they greeted us with leis, freshly squeezed juice, and red bindis for our foreheads. We were in heaven. On our own travels we tend to stay at hotels we can get for the lowest price, and we certainly dont sleep on the clouds that were the Hotel Ashok beds. Needless to say my roommate Genevieve and I did not choose to go out that night, I laid my ass in bed and watched the American channels they had playing on their flat screen TV. I fell asleep almost immediately after a long, travel weary day.
