Kandivali, Mumbai, India

Following in the tradition of several friends and my siblings, I thought I would start keeping a blog of my 4-month stay in India. This is my first one, so bear with me while I’m working out the kinks, and I’m always interested in any suggestions for posting topics.

I left JFK about 11:30pm yesterday and after a 14 hour non-stop flight I landed in Mumbai around 11pm. The airplane was by far the nicest one I’ve flown in, a brand-new 767 with decent legroom and 10 inch TV screens in economy class with dozens of movies in English and Hindi. But by far the part was the fact that the flight was half-empty, leaving the two seats next to me free. This non-stop route only started August 1^st so not many people knew about it, but I would highly recommend it. It gets a tad boring if you’re traveling by yourself, I ended up watching 5 movies, but it’s worth it to avoid annoying layovers in Paris or London.

I was picked up by my uncle Dr. Samir Gandhi who lives in Kandivali, a suburb of Mumbai. His daughter Aditi came with him and she’s was extremely excited to see me. My uncle told me that she’d been counting down the days to my arrival for weeks. We reached their flat close to midnight where my aunt Malan Mami was waiting us, Adit, my other cousin, had already gone to sleep.

It feels a bit strange to be coming to India by myself, since I’ve always come with my family. But since I’ll be staying with family here, it’s not like I’ll be on my own in this huge city, which would be a rather daunting prospect.