India: here I come!

Een impressie van Trivandrum op het internet

Finally, all the preparatory work is done, and the journey can start… I’m so looking forward to going that I’m not sleepy at all. However, I’d better get some sleep, because tomorrow day starts early (alarm at 4:30). I’ll meet Els, my friend with whom I will be travelling the next month, at the airport. She will leave around 7:30, and my plane – going to London - will take off at 9:45. There I’ll leave for Mumbai, where I’ll see Els again around 0:30.

The preparation for this trip was quite long: first looking for a development project where I could do my internship and applying for the travel grant – since we had some “communication problems” with our first organisation, we changed organisation last-minute-like, but in the end, the project looks great and the travel grant was submitted… Then the planning of our stay started, but as Leen (my sister) and Kristof (my brother-in-law) came with the great news that Leen was pregnant and that she will give birth in November, I certainly wanted to be back by then. That caused a problem because I planned to do an internship of at least three months and then also travel around for about a month. But it was solved by leaving early, travelling first and doing the internship for only 2,5 months. Then I started to look for a travel partner, but I didn’t have to look for a long time since Els (a fellow architecture-student) was very enthusiastic from the first moment. She stayed that enthusiastic, and thanks to her I’m not forgetting about a million things (leaving not too many things I could still forget I guess – and hope ;) , we know where we’ll go after we land and what interesting places there are to visit.

And then the last days before leaving: hectic of course, because Leen & Kristof and Koen (my little brother) & Karen (his girlfriend) already left on Tuesdays, and mom and dad will leave together with me - all going to France where my niece will get married the 21st of July. I had to pack too, but lazy as I am, I left it till the last minutes… However, °now°, my backpack is standing there, fully loaded and ready to go to INDIA!!! And going to India, I thought painting my hair black could help to start feeling the Indian - the results you can see on the pictures: looking good, don’t you think? Thanks to Evie, who had to do it twice, but the only reason for that was that I didn’t buy the right colour shampoo.

Our plans for the coming days: arrive in Mumbai safely, and then leave it quite quickly to try to diminish the culture shock as much as possible. First stop will be Aurangabad…

More news to come!