Arrived In India!

After a long plane trip ( I have the old lady swollen feet to prove it), I am finally in Mysore! It became clear to me that I was no longer in the United States when I used the restroom in the Bangalore airport. It took the forty minutes that I waited for my luggage for me to gear myself up to using the restroom in the airport. I was no longer in the safety of the Lufthansa airplane. There was one stall with a toilet, the others were just holes in the ground. A lady in the restroom rationed out toilet tissue to me and I went to the bathroom using all the courage and hovering power that I possessed.

I had been forewarned but I must say that it is true, India is a world of smells- a mix of spices, animals, excrement from both animals and humans and things that I have yet to define. Once out of Bangalore and here in Mysore, the smells have softened or perhaps I am growing more accustomed to them. It was amazing to me as I stepped out of the airport that it was the middle of the night and yet the city of Bangalore was still buzzing. Men (likely taxi drivers) were lined up talking and smoking with one another. I saw few women out that night.

We arrived in Mysore after a 3 and a half hour journey where thirty minutes was spent in a gas station. Apparently, the bus driver had a credit card to pay for the gas but the credit card didn't work. That is interesting to me. There are so many people living in poverty here....but all I saw around me on the drive was poverty adjacent to technology buildings. People have credit cards and cell phones but they sleep outside. On the journey to Mysore, I often thought I was looking at a pile of old trash only to see it move and realize that it was a human asleep on the ground.