Our Journey To India…
all journeys have a beginning and unfortunately most have an end, so before I overload social media with many photos of our travels and you begin to lose interest, I must tell you about the beginning.
Everyone knows that without my sweet friend Reshma this trip would not have happened at this time. But there were five other people that had a large impact in making it happen and it just happens that they are all men. Interesting…
First there is Gopa, Reshma’s husband. Without him Reshma and I would still be planning and the trip would be over. Thank you for reigning us in and setting us on the right path and mostly for putting Aaron at ease. If it hadn’t been for you he would have never been ok with my dream of traveling to India and dragging our son along. Thank you Gopa!
Second there is my night in shinning armor Adarsh. He is the Manager of Sales and Marketing at Vythiri Village near Reshma’s parents home in Wayanad, Kerela, India where we stayed for the first four days. Go Kerela!!! Reshma called this our “softening point”. Adarsh endured countless emails and phone calls from Reshma and I and arranged many details of our first week in India. From helping us decide where to stay in Bangalore, which is where we flew into, to transportation to Wayanad, more specifically Kalpetta which is 8 hours or so south of Bangalore, to touring Mysore Palace along the way and basically taking complete care of a very nervous American women and her 12 year old son who had never traveled to India before.
I had know idea what Adarsh looked like or how old he was until he walked into our hotel in Bangalore and greeted us with a huge smile. Immediately I knew that we were safe and it was going to be a great start to an extraordinary journey. This amazing young man had taken the day off from work and ask his friend Prabeesh (man number three) to be our driver. And when I say driver, I do not mean driver in the sense that any American will understand unless you have traveled to India. Prabeesh was a god as far as I’m concerned. Bangalore (officially Bengaluru) the “Garden City” and “The Silicon Valley of India” is on the top 10 list of worst traffic conditions in the world… let’s just say Seattle, LA and Manhattan all rolled into one mixed with cows, goats, pedestrians, scooters, motorcycles, tuk tuks and anything else you might want to throw in. Complete mayhem and the most exciting thing I have ever experienced. I loved every minute of, even when I thought we would all die at any given moment.
So I’ll skip forward to the part where we parted ways with Prabeesh at Vythiri Village and said our goodbyes and many thanks…but to my surprise we would meet again.
To be continued…
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I can’t credit for these photos. The top two by Adarsh and the traffic photos pulled from Google.
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