My Trip to India

Well, let me tell you, this past month has flew by like you wouldn't believe!  I left for India the last part of October, spent about 10 days there, got back to the good old USA, promptly got a really, really bad cold that developed into Walking Pneumonia.  It has not been boring!

I finally got around to editing some of the pictures I took and I am going to post them here.  I hope you enjoy them and my explanation of what you are seeing.

As you know, I was in India on business.  I have been working with a wonderful off shore team since 2006 and I finally got to meet them in person.  They are all wonderful people and I made some new friends too.

Our trip started out on the 26th of October with a 16 hour flight from Chicago to New Delhi.  We had to wait in the Delhi airport for about 5 hours before we flew to Chennai in southern India.  We arrived about midnight on the 27th, met our co-workers & friends; then we were on our way to the hotel to check in.

I flew to India with 2 other people from my workplace and we agreed to meet for breakfast at 0930 the next day (Sunday) and I promptly woke up at 0917.  My week has begun!

Here's what I saw when I looked out my hotel window.  The people across the street were digging by hand in the dirt & women would load dirt into baskets, put them on their head and dump the dirt on the side of the building site.

I learned 2 things very quickly.  In most of the restaurants we went to 1) they have buffet style food, 2) they only have instant coffee.  That morning I drank 3 cups and I didn't care how it tasted, I NEEDED it.   

After breakfast, we started on our sightseeing for the day.  

Mohit, Phil, Aysah, Melanie, me & Meenakshi - ready for our first day in India

On the way to the first site, I managed to take one picture, but it does show you the tropical scenery.  

Those are coconut palm trees, they were all over the place.

We went to 3 places in all on that Sunday, the first one was a representative of the different regions in that area of India.  It is called DakshinaChitra.  After that we went to Mamallapuram and saw Krishna's Butterball.  We then went to the Shore temple.

A small courtyard

Going into one of the buildings

The landscaping is beautiful!

A representation of what a home in India looked like around the turn of the century.

These parrots flew wild all over the place in India, I saw a lot of them in Delhi too.  In this case, the birds are supposed to pick a card out of the deck and your fortune/future is revealed.

More gorgeous landscaping

I was amazed at all the flowering trees I saw, they were very beautiful.

The pictures below were in one of the buildings, the colors were so vivid and the artwork was really defined.

We then entered the weaving section of the village, here are some pictures I took of that.

Examples of how the weaved cloth was used.

After that tour was over, we went to eat lunch at the Radisson Temple Bay hotel, here are some pictures of the courtyard we walked past at the hotel.  

 

After a great lunch, we then went to Krishna's Butterball, and the shore temple.  Here are the pictures from that excursion.

Krishna's Butterball - That's Phil (in blue) holding up the ball so it doesn't fall over.

Side view

Arjuna's Penance bas-relief

Arjuna's Penance bas-relief

Arjuna's Penance bas-relief

Here are some pictures of the Shore Temple, it was getting to the end of the day, and the sun was setting.

Shore Temple in the distance

Here's the gate we walked through to get to the shore temple.  After we were done, when we came back to the gate, we were locked in.  They wanted us to climb over the fence to get out because that's how the employees got out after it was locked.  We told them "It ain't gonna happen!"

The sun was setting and I took this beautiful picture.  It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

I'll post more pictures in another blog entry.  I just wanted to share with you my first day experience in Chennai.  What wonderful memories!