It has been a very busy month. The complications started in Srinagar. I had to make a last trip to Puttaparthi to pick up my huge bags and ferry them to Delhi. I planned to fly to Bangalore, take the bus to Puttaparthi and then train it back up to Delhi again. The air tickets were easy but the train tickets something else. Late in May I tried to book a train berth online. No luck, the site is down for maintenance until June 1st. June 1st you cannot book a seat online because there are only wait listed seats available. So I emailed my friend in Edmonton and asked if his Dad could go down to the train station, (in India) and buy me a berth. Then his Dad sent me the train ticket and some other stuff they wanted to send back to Edmonton to my hotel in Bangalore. I was 25th on a wait list at this point, but everybody seemed quite confident that I would get it confirmed. A friend in Srinagar had told me that travel agents buy up blocks of tickets for their customers every day and then roll them over shortly before the train leaves. Crazy system.
Anyways despite the worries about train tickets everything went very well. Landed in Delhi just before a heatwave, but I only had to hang out for two hours on the hot pavement (40), before they would let me in to catch my Bangalore connection. Bangalore was cool and overcast, (around 30), the monsoon was starting, and I got my rail ticket and care package without problems. Then off to Puttaparti. No problems there either, cool and overcast, swept up the desiccated cockroach corpses in my apartment and sealed everything I was leaving in plastic bags and got my big bags down to the train station to find out if I had a confirmed reservation yet. I did! Wow! Very happy to not to have to pay those overweight air charges all the way back to Delhi. Weighed my bags in the Puttaparthi station and found out I was at least 10 kilos overweight on each of them for Singapore Air, so I had to make plans to do something about that. Luckily I would have three and a half days in Delhi to get that sorted out.
Arrived in Delhi just as the heatwave ended, it had been over 50 degrees the day before I got off the train. A friend in Srinagar got his nephew to put me up in his Delhi apartment. That was a life saver. Had a look at his brother-in-law's shawl warehouse, that's definitely where I am buying shawls from now on, great selection and amazing prices. And had a small taste of monsoon weather in Delhi. It started raining about noon on the day after I arrived. The mornings were best. Around seven thirty eight o'clock these deep black clouds would start lashing the trees about and slowly march across the city. When they arrived overhead the skies would open and a solid wall of water would fall out of the sky. Then the sun would come out and the puddles would steam away in the streets and life would resume. But it never did get as hot again after that first day I got there. Very interesting thing to see.
Took the overweight stuff out of my bags, sent them off on a sea voyage and got myself down to the airport in good time. I was so much nicer to spend the time a some one's house than to try to operate out of a hotel. And my host's estimates on the weight of my bags worked out. I was allowed no more than 32 kilos per bag. One of them came out at 30K and the other at 31K. Of course my carry-on was grossly overloaded, but isn't every body's?
Anyhow, the flight was the usual ordeal, my back gets so sore from all that sitting and I can't sleep sitting up either. Then another bus and ferry trip to Victoria. Met my daughter and brand new grandson for the first time. And then up the Island to catch up with my sleep deficit at my brother's. My apartment sitters won't be into their own place before July 3rd, so I'm just hanging out on the coast for a while.
Got a bunch of photos I haven't processed yet, will post them when I can get on my own box. Looking forward to getting out there and flogging some Indian trinkets. Picked up some painted balls I'm going to try to sell in volume to some of the Christmas stores in Western Canada. Definitely politically correct, unbreakable, made from recycled material, unique hand painted craft and inexpensive enough to sell at wholesale prices and still make a bit of profit.
All in all a great trip, learned a lot, fell in love with Kashmir. Can't wait to get back.
Monday, June 25, 2007
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