Coverage: zero

Current location: Leh, Ladakh

Latitude (DMS): 34° 10' 0 N

Longitude (DMS): 77° 34' 60 E

Elevation: 3500m

A rare moment of connection to the world wide web: woohoo!
No cellphone coverage whatsoever...
No connection to the outside world.

Previously on "Passage to India":

Monday September 7:
Meeting with all 5 partners at the hotel.
A true "checking each other out" ritual. They introduced themselves and the projects again, we presented ourselves, everyone dressed up as if it were the first day of school.
No second chance to a first impression right.
Mr. Ramesh, IBM Vice President General Business for India, provided some insights in IBM's presence in India and doing business locally. And that got our appetite going. So: anyone care for lunch?

OK, enough work for one day, on to Mumbai's city center. By taxi. An experience in its own.
Rain pouring down + hole in the taxi door/floor = soaked seat and wet dress/behind.

There's no rules in traffic here. Karma rules. Karma and the almighty horn.
No signaling, no marks on the roads, no giving way. Just horn when you want to make a point or let someone else know you're about to hit them.

Tuesday, September 8:
Everyone off to their brand new clients.
Destination Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS) for Clai and me, about an hour's drive (and of course pushing our luck in traffic again).
The campus is an oasis of peace and quiet compared to Mumbai's roads.
We met with the Director, Professor Parasuraman and Sonam Jorghesh for one of the most elegant meetings I've ever had.
Ingredients:

• a couch in a serene Indian office
• a very wise and eloquent Professor
• English sandwiches
• water (the drinkable kind)
• tea and coffee.

After getting our very own room with a view, the campus' canteen called.
Nice food, unfortunately the belly did not agree.
No time to go into details though as we needed to pack for our next trip: Leh, Ladhak to meet our friend the renowned Seabuckthorn or Leh-berry face to face.

Arriving at the airport: sheer panic in Clai's eyes. The kind of panic that says: I think I might have forgotten my passport.
(I thought the same but didn't dare to say it out loud, I was wrong though: experienced packer right?).
A minute later, Clai was sitting in a puddle of chips, IBM pens, money belts, flashlights and panic sweat.
All in all, the passport made it to the airport in time (thanks to CDC-Kabi).
1-0 for Clai in the screwing up department. At least that cuts me some slack.

I'll probably need it...

No more enlightenment

The path to enlightenment is temporarily interrupted.
No more wandering the streets without earthly possessions.
My suitcases and I have been reunited.
Pity on one hand: I liked living out of other people's closets.
Today Dawn's clothes were up to be worn by yours truly.

But I have no more excuse. Everything is going back to their rightful owners.
And I'm back to my own "dressing".

Honk if you can see this

I could drive here too, for sure...

Lunch is alive

New day, new people, no new clothes.
Off to breakfast in the bathroom slippers it is! (they're new...)
I'm kind of getting used to not having stuff already.
It's easy being a parasite and just borrowing pretty much everything there is to borrow. I've got an excuse now. Cable to load pictures to the PC, powercord, pills, slippers, t-shirts, skirts. The clothes are even ironed and impregnated with bugspray! Good stuff!

Sue, our self-appointed medical advisor carrying enough drugs to start a chain of pharmacies, gave a breakfast tour and was able to point out exactly which fruits had been washed with bottled water, which items had uncooked milk in them, what things to avoid and: oh my God Sandra! Did you drink from the orange bucket in the room!? (it sounds worse than it is, trust me.)
Looking at people's reactions however, I thought I would have instant Delhi belly (at least) but luckily, I seem to be used to more than drinking from something the colleagues thought to be a room humidifier (or a rice cooker). Hey, I eat at the IBM cafeteria...

Off to "class" where the CDC team (Bob and Cubby) told us all about Bombay/Mumbai, the key performance indicators for each of our projects and handed out the per diems.
Our new best friends, hotel manager Glen, Frontdesk Amin and housekeeping manager Mahesh (Laundry m'am? No Mahesh, not quite yet...) came to introduce themselves and we bribed them with tootsie rolls (nurse Sue brought about 5 pounds of them).

At about 2:30pm, we felt the time had come to strenghten the inner human and -finally- went off for lunch at a renowned seafood restaurant.
The food was so fresh, it first crawled over the table before returning to our plates in a less happy form (at least for them).
I'm not necessarily a big fan of meeting my food up close and personal but the Bombay duck (it's fish), fish curry and tandoori prawns were delish! Yum's the word.
And here it's "kush" meaning "i'm happy".
A walk on the market and a pair of sandals later, we went for a coffee, still wondering how we could have walked around all afternoon without seeing any foreigners.

Meanwhile back at the hotel no word on the lost luggage yet.
Susi, my German UK friend, told me it's only normal the luggage handlers went on strike after having to carry my concrete bags on the conveyer belt. Hmm... You think?

Red alert: mosquito in the room - off on another borrowing spree...











For more pictures: http://sandra.aminus3.com/

Lost in space

Sitting in my room... all alone... all alone as in: I have nothing!
I repeat: nothing! (nada, niente, rien, niks, niemendal)
No luggage whatsoever... Lost in luggage space.
After paying 600€ extra for excess baggage (yes, after long negotiations with myself I only managed to reduce it by 3 kg), they didn't even bother to ship my brand new suitcase (and an older version) to Mumbai.
Can you imagine?
My worst nightmare come true.
After airport officials managed to drag me away from the luggage belt, the red tape process began.
Luckily the pick up by CDC went more smoothly and back at the hotel, met up with Clai and Sue who put me up with granola bars (to swallow down the borrowed malaria pills), a skirt (I already figured jeans will be way too hot tomorrow), contact lens-solution, scrunchies and a hair brush.

Oh yes, and the hotel gave me a rose. Bon appétit.
Luxury in excess!

India - the 411

Flight schedule: Brussels - Frankfurt - Mumbai.
BRU-FRA: Lufthansa - a 1 hour flight and ... delayed (Deutsche pünktlichkeit)
FRA-BOM: Air India - Run Forrest Run - only 1 hour to catch the next flight and because of the delay, 30 mins.

At the gate I was one of the 5 non Indian passengers. It started to dawn on my, I was soon to become a minority.
Colourful plane and colourful people.
3 seats all to myself so slept pretty much throughout the entire flight only to wake up for my first Indian meal.
Some like it hot.
And they would have loved this meal.

Now, a bit of "W.O. les" read in a book Sabine gave me on Thursday:

• India is as large as Europe and 1/3rd of the US (in surface).
• 95 mountains over 7.500 meters
• the Indian Mawsynram is the wettest place on earth - 20 times London's rainfall
• every 1.2 seconds a baby is born in India
• 83% of the population is Hindu
• Famous Indians:
  
  • Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi (1869 - 1948)
    aka Mahatma (he whose soul is great) Ghandi, leader of the independence movement.
    Insisted on pacifist road to independence
  • Siddhartha Buddha (543 - 483 BC)
  • Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 - 1964)
    India's first prime minister
    
  • Indira Ghandi (1917 - 1984)
    Nehru's daughter and first female prime minister
  • B.K.S. Iyengar (1918 - )
    Founder of yoga
• 1,166,079,217 inhabitants
  

Yes, the lectures are optional. But then again, so is graduation.
Testing you tomorrow!

All aboard

Tough week? Treat yourself. Get on a plane. Go to India
In about 3 hours the winged words "Welcome aboard, this is your pilot speaking. Air CSC is ready for takeoff" will echo through the Air India flight out.

'Today those in first class will enjoy (strikethrough as not applicable).
In our main cabin, besides whining kids, the occasional bag of peanuts and coughing neighbours (is it Mexican flu? is it?), we'll be offering plenty of stuff to read on India, the Seabuckthorn berry and consulting with your emerging country partner. The journey has begun. Get out the carry-ons and bring on the challenge.

Almost ready.
Almost.
Maybe just one more nap.