Well, That Was Close

My parents and I left the Mumbai train station the day before yesterday, about eight hours before the shooting there began. We're all fine, just sad and disappointed.

This first blog post is going to have to be pretty short and crappy, I leave on an overnight "sleeper" train to Hyderabad -- a big tech and film center -- in three hours. Also, these first few posts will be pretty chronological since I haven't been here long enough to have any insight and since all I'm doing is the tourist stuff (rapid-fire tours, etc.) with my parents.

I landed in Mumbai on Tuesday The flight was broken into two approximately nine-hour legs (San Francisco to London and London to Mumbai) with a seven-hour wait in London. It sucked, of course, but I did meet a cool Portuguese couple who spent four months in Mumbai in 2006 and were on their way back. In the interim two years they rented out two houses, one of which they built. (Random aside: the guys who run the Internet cafe where I'm writing this are blasting "Lean Back.")

I bought a cell phone the night that I landed (e-mail me for the number). I was also reacquainted with Indian traffic. Everyone walks on the road (and highway) and they're always just inches from the cars. Also, there are no rules, except honk your horn a whole lot. If a car horn in the U.S. is a rare slap on the head, a horn here is an "excuse me, I'm about to run into you."

On Wednesday, we traveled to Aurangabad in Central(ish) India. It was home to the last Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb, so there's a fort, mausoleum, etc. Also, nearby are some 2,000 year old religious caves (carved out of mountains), which I will write more about in my next post. One temple I visited today was built about a thousand years ago over a span of 150 years with something like 700 workers.

I've met some interesting people, including a man who owns a factory in Aurangabad (he makes carbide and high-speed tools for the auto industry). He purchased his land here at about 50 cents per square meter in 1992 and now it's worth about 10 dollars. His English was great, but he's never left India. I also met a Spanish camerawoman who works on a TV news program for Spain's public access channel and a pair of retired geologists who worked for India's official geological survey.

Oh, and globalization is in full swing. They now have Jethro Tull out here:



I'll post real photos in my next post (which, I promise, won't be so awful).