In country

We arrived this morning for our initial visit after a LOT of airline travel. Our itinerary took us from Columbus to Detroit, where we first flew to Amsterdam on a 7.5 hour flight.  We got there and walked right onto our next plane, for another 9 hour flight.  The one redeeming aspect of it was that we got to ride Business class, so the seats were in these little pod type things, and the seats folded flat so you could (attempt to) sleep.  They gave us plenty of food too, which was actually quite good.  I'm not sure I wouldn't have lost it if I'd been stuck in a middle seat back in the coach section.

We arrived in Mumbai with out any issues. The terminal here looked really new and modern, in stark contrast to the parts of the city we've seen so far.  Our instructions were to exit the secure area and look for a man with a sign saying "NetJets."  Here's what we saw:

He's got to be in there somewhere, right?

Unfortunately....no driver for us.  After some phone calls (here's to cell phones working everywhere!) we finally determined that they'd gotten either the time or day wrong. An hour later and a few more calls, and we were off to the hotel.  

The first thing I noticed is the rather constant smell of smoke in the air.  Not sure where it's coming from, but I think it might be the fires from the people in the large slum areas throughout the city.  Everything else was in line with what I'd read so far.  Lots of people out, considering it was 1 AM, and the traffic was exactly as it was in the video I posted previously, except we got to be inside the car watching it happen.  The cars here must need the horn to be honked at least once every 30 seconds to keep going, as they all do it.  All night.

I'd been up for almost 24 hours by the time I got here, but I took a z-quil anyway, since the time zone is so different than home (10.5 hours later). I managed to get a good 7 hours of sleep.  

The view from my hotel window

We're off today to tour the neighborhood where we'll be living, so I'll have more pictures to post when we're done with that.