Amsterdam, Netherlands and Jodhpur, India
Murphy could have used traveling as a test case for his law. In an instant, one’s seemingly smooth sailing can turn into hurricane-force squalls, manageable only through Captain Dan’s belligerent willpower.
I had just boarded the third of four legs, Amsterdam to Mumbai, in my flight schedule to India. It began inauspiciously with the Captain suggesting a slight delay due to some erratic behaviour in the left engine. Although after only a brief delay, we began the monotonous taxi out to the runway. Everything to my knowledge was progressing swimmingly, so I began to doze off, exhausted from 15 hours of jumping through hoops. Three quarters of an hour into the flight, my less-than-refreshing beauty sleep was abruptly cut short by a pop, a momentary loss of light and a sudden turbulent lurching to the left. Piercing my drowsy haze, I attempted to assess the situation. There was a distinct lack of dangling oxygen masks, runaway food carts and hysteria, your typical plane-crash fare, so I deduced the evasion of our demise and unwittingly hit the snooze button on potential disaster.
Upon waking a second time, I found that we had arrived. Pleased at the realization that I had just touched down in India, I stretched to get a first glimpse of my ephemeral home. To my surprise, the large white box letters “SCHIPHOL” of Amsterdam’s International Airport were staring me down. In fact, I was still in Europe, a long way from the Asian Sub-Continent.
I latter discovered that one of the plane’s two generators had died in midair. Upon landing, we waited patiently on board while the faulty generator was examined below. After an hour, we were finally informed that the plane had been grounded indefinitely; resulting in a series of unfortunate events: waiting to queue at a transfer desk, queuing at a transfer desk, commiserating with other stranded passengers, waiting some more, receiving water and an almond cookie, changing queues, waiting less patiently, obtaining our new itineraries, and picking up a small toiletries bag before ambling towards a hotel bed. Hot, sweaty, and frustrated, I resigned myself to a night in Amsterdam, without the opportunity to explore.
A half day removed from chaotic airport terminals was the perfect release of stress. Again as in the beginning of my trip, I was fresh and alert, fully prepared for the last several legs. I was now routed though Abu Dhabi and Mumbai before supposedly arriving in Jodhpur. Fortunately, these last legs were much less eventful, except for the wonderfully spontaneous conversations with fellow travelers. I was befriended by a number of young Indians in the domestic terminal in Mumbai. In fact, there was even an unofficial line-up to speak with me at one point!
My first Indian inefficiency experience did not take long to occur … the transfer between international and domestic terminals in Mumbai was a bustling, testosterone-filled traffic jam. The sprawling queue was a result of a broken baggage security machine. The situation would be almost unimaginable in the Western world … a hundred men with luggage carts all pushing towards a bottle neck just before the exit, while continually arguing for every inch with an exorbitant number of supposed airport officials. I was the only Caucasian and stood out like snowflake on a muddy road.
The flight to Jodhpur was short and sweet and gave me an opportunity to practice my French with a Belgian couple; although, in retrospect it was probably more them practicing their English. I was met by Veena, one of my new Indian mothers, who easily picked me out of a crowd. The taxi ride back to our Hotel was as noisy as a wedding procession and as tortuous as a roller coaster ride, worsened by the unpredictable nature of the autorickshaw drivers.
Immediately upon being introduced to the rest of the group, I was informed that we were to be thrust into an unexpected meeting with my NGO supervisor. So I was given barely half an hour to throw off the cobwebs and remove the haggard expression from my face. A cold shave latter and I was more than ready to wade back into traffic for the ride to Jal Bhagirathi Foundation (JBF) compound. My co-intern Abi and I listened intently as Mr. Singh explained the JBF mission and described the intricacies of our project and his expectations. In essence, our project will be based around collecting primary research on women's self-help groups (SHGs) in Rajasthan, so that JBF can effectively implement micro-enterprise best practices throughout a network of local groups. Furthermore, he elucidated the pith of our research: evaluating the SHGs, appreciating their capacity for marketable production, and subsequently determining the liability of supply and demand for this production. Simply, we are tasked with determining successful procedures in SHGs and using them to help establish a means to self sustainability. Overall, I am absolutely ecstatic about the opportunity to tackle this initiative. Its scope and scale are much larger than I had anticipated, but the sense of trust permeated by JBF was overwhelmingly empowering. I truly hope this initial excitement will remain with me for the entirety of my participation.
So after a rather taxing journey to Jodhpur and the trepidation of being immediately thrust into the spotlight, I was rewarded with a sense of genuine adventure. As rapidly as things can go from good to bad to worse, they can just as easily reverse course. But then again, I suppose life is like a box of chocolates …
Murphy could have used traveling as a test case for his law. In an instant, one’s seemingly smooth sailing can turn into hurricane-force squalls, manageable only through Captain Dan’s belligerent willpower.
I had just boarded the third of four legs, Amsterdam to Mumbai, in my flight schedule to India. It began inauspiciously with the Captain suggesting a slight delay due to some erratic behaviour in the left engine. Although after only a brief delay, we began the monotonous taxi out to the runway. Everything to my knowledge was progressing swimmingly, so I began to doze off, exhausted from 15 hours of jumping through hoops. Three quarters of an hour into the flight, my less-than-refreshing beauty sleep was abruptly cut short by a pop, a momentary loss of light and a sudden turbulent lurching to the left. Piercing my drowsy haze, I attempted to assess the situation. There was a distinct lack of dangling oxygen masks, runaway food carts and hysteria, your typical plane-crash fare, so I deduced the evasion of our demise and unwittingly hit the snooze button on potential disaster.
Upon waking a second time, I found that we had arrived. Pleased at the realization that I had just touched down in India, I stretched to get a first glimpse of my ephemeral home. To my surprise, the large white box letters “SCHIPHOL” of Amsterdam’s International Airport were staring me down. In fact, I was still in Europe, a long way from the Asian Sub-Continent.
I latter discovered that one of the plane’s two generators had died in midair. Upon landing, we waited patiently on board while the faulty generator was examined below. After an hour, we were finally informed that the plane had been grounded indefinitely; resulting in a series of unfortunate events: waiting to queue at a transfer desk, queuing at a transfer desk, commiserating with other stranded passengers, waiting some more, receiving water and an almond cookie, changing queues, waiting less patiently, obtaining our new itineraries, and picking up a small toiletries bag before ambling towards a hotel bed. Hot, sweaty, and frustrated, I resigned myself to a night in Amsterdam, without the opportunity to explore.
A half day removed from chaotic airport terminals was the perfect release of stress. Again as in the beginning of my trip, I was fresh and alert, fully prepared for the last several legs. I was now routed though Abu Dhabi and Mumbai before supposedly arriving in Jodhpur. Fortunately, these last legs were much less eventful, except for the wonderfully spontaneous conversations with fellow travelers. I was befriended by a number of young Indians in the domestic terminal in Mumbai. In fact, there was even an unofficial line-up to speak with me at one point!
My first Indian inefficiency experience did not take long to occur … the transfer between international and domestic terminals in Mumbai was a bustling, testosterone-filled traffic jam. The sprawling queue was a result of a broken baggage security machine. The situation would be almost unimaginable in the Western world … a hundred men with luggage carts all pushing towards a bottle neck just before the exit, while continually arguing for every inch with an exorbitant number of supposed airport officials. I was the only Caucasian and stood out like snowflake on a muddy road.
The flight to Jodhpur was short and sweet and gave me an opportunity to practice my French with a Belgian couple; although, in retrospect it was probably more them practicing their English. I was met by Veena, one of my new Indian mothers, who easily picked me out of a crowd. The taxi ride back to our Hotel was as noisy as a wedding procession and as tortuous as a roller coaster ride, worsened by the unpredictable nature of the autorickshaw drivers.
Immediately upon being introduced to the rest of the group, I was informed that we were to be thrust into an unexpected meeting with my NGO supervisor. So I was given barely half an hour to throw off the cobwebs and remove the haggard expression from my face. A cold shave latter and I was more than ready to wade back into traffic for the ride to Jal Bhagirathi Foundation (JBF) compound. My co-intern Abi and I listened intently as Mr. Singh explained the JBF mission and described the intricacies of our project and his expectations. In essence, our project will be based around collecting primary research on women's self-help groups (SHGs) in Rajasthan, so that JBF can effectively implement micro-enterprise best practices throughout a network of local groups. Furthermore, he elucidated the pith of our research: evaluating the SHGs, appreciating their capacity for marketable production, and subsequently determining the liability of supply and demand for this production. Simply, we are tasked with determining successful procedures in SHGs and using them to help establish a means to self sustainability. Overall, I am absolutely ecstatic about the opportunity to tackle this initiative. Its scope and scale are much larger than I had anticipated, but the sense of trust permeated by JBF was overwhelmingly empowering. I truly hope this initial excitement will remain with me for the entirety of my participation.
So after a rather taxing journey to Jodhpur and the trepidation of being immediately thrust into the spotlight, I was rewarded with a sense of genuine adventure. As rapidly as things can go from good to bad to worse, they can just as easily reverse course. But then again, I suppose life is like a box of chocolates …
