Some time ago, MAC went to the 40th reunion of her class at Carnegie Mellon's Graduate School of Industrial Administration, (GSIA). One of her alumni colleagues, Hemant Sanghvi and his wife Darshana, hosted a party for the, now rather older, former students. During this and in casual conversation, some of the friends noted that they would love to travel to India. Some time later, Hemant and Darshana, who are frequent visitors to India proposed a trip for all those interested in going. Well the uptake was good and there is now a group of 12 who will travel to India in February 2019. Hemant and Darshana have done a superb job in putting together a spectacular itinerary and arrangements. So there will be a group of 12 of us, including Hemant and Darshana, this will be six of the alumni and their partners.
To say we are looking forward to this is an understatement. We are extremely grateful to Hemant and Darshana for all the work they have put in to arrange this trip, even to the extent of short-listing restaurants for us to eat at!!!!
We already have a lively WhatsApp group and are swapping information and questions about what to wear, how to get visas and the like. I will give a very brief run down of the itinerary here and go into more details later.
We arrive in Delhi (MAC and I from our visit to Sri Lanka, the others from their home countries) on 6th February 2019. We will spend two days in Delhi seeing a number of the important sights. Then it is off to Agra for the Taj Mahal. Then we return to Delhi to take a flight to Udaipur, from there to Jaipur and on to Jaisalmar. We end up south in Kerala before returning north to end the trip in Mumbai.
Those few words above do not even scratch the surface of what we will see, do, eat, drink and enjoy during the time we are in this amazing country which I have not visited for many, many years but always remember very fondly.
So there are many preparations to make. We have printed out our e-visas, had our vaccinations and arranged for the cats to be cared for while we are away. We have had lengthy exchanges with everyone about what clothes to bring, how cell phones will work, what to do about money, local customs and general logistics.
So what of India, some statistics: The capital is, of course, New Delhi but the largest city is Mumbai. The area of the country is 1.27 million square miles and the estimated population in 2016 was 1.324 billion with a population density of 1036/sq mile (USA equivalent 85/sq mile!!!). The currency is the Indian Rupee.
India attained independence from the U.K in 1947. The country is majority Hindu at about 80% with about 14% Islam and the rest Christian, Buddhist, etc. GDP in 2018 was estimated at US$10.4 trillion with per capita GDP US$7,795. The country is divided up into 29 States and 7 Union Territories.
There is so much more one could write about this country beyond these dry facts, its amazing culture, innovative industrial development, sports prowess, (cricket ought, perhaps, to be included among the religions!!), music, the wonderful food of course, stunning architecture, a truly staggering movie industry, wonderful literature and performing arts and so much more. I am sure that this will get covered as best I can in subsequent posts.
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