Day One--Pune, India

Qatar Airways is toally the way to fly. Plenty of leg room, 178 movies on demand, and LED color changing cove lighting (which greatly amused Lily). We had a 4 hour layover in Doha, a small, tidy airport where large bags of candy was apparently the hot ticket item at duty free.


We arrived in Mumbai at about 4am and collected our bags. The airport has undergone much renovation in the 4 years since we were here last (notably, the replacement of fans by free-standing air conditioners), but it is still a shockingly small airport for such a populated city.


Nihal (Chris's friend from Brown) was kind enough to pick us up at the airport and drive us the 2.5 hours southeast to Pune as the sun was rising. Shruti (Nihal's wife) is 7 months pregnant, and looking beautiful, although she seems eager for the baby to arrive soon!


They took us to breakfast at Vaishali, which, despite the unassuming exterior, had a lovely garden patio in the back. We dined on uttaba, dosa, and ubma (Lily's favorite). The mosambi (sweet lime) juice was amazing.




We relaxed at the house where we played Scrabble, and cooed over the sonogram. We made a brief (and dazzaling) stop in Jyo (Nihal's mother) and Shruti's fine jewlery store, which created Lily's engagement ring many years ago. Then, we headed out to meet Siddhu (Nihal's cousin) for lunch at a Chinese place. Most of the food was neither authentic Chinese nor American Chinese, but a distinctly Indian- inspired flavor of Chinese (despite the dish that claimed to be "American Chop Suey").


Back at the house, Siddhu, Shruti, and Lily talked politics while Chris accomanied Nihal to his office. After a brief nap, we decided not to go with Nihal to his cousin's engagement party (not only were we travel weary, but we had no formal Indian attire). So, now we are sitting in the kitchen with Shruti while Chris gets a cooking lesson in how to prepare pav-bhaji.


It's nice to start vacation in a familiar place with friends with no real agenda but relaxation!


("So, what did you guys do in India?" "Played Scrabble and had Chinese!")