I know many of my friends are patiently awaiting my blog stories of our recent adventures. It took us awhile to go through pictures and get back into our real life in terms of work, school, laundry and cooking.
Oh, what a trip we had! We flew Air India from London Heathrow to Delhi. Our flight was late in the evening (9:45 pm) intentionally, as then I knew our kids would sleep. They, of course, were super excited to explore their personal TV screens first. Thankfully, nothing too exciting was playing for their age group, so after a quick bite to eat of airplane dinner food, all kids fell asleep for several hours. It was very late when the lights of the plane were finally turned off (almost midnight), so I could rest some too. Our big flights are usually a blur—seriously….I think I didn’t get up once during our 7.5 hour flight because Mark was sleeping on my lap…sigh. Everyone got some sleep though, and we were ready to meet India.
Our first stop—immigration control. Man, this was the LONGEST landing card (customs form) we’d ever had to fill out….they wanted to know everything but the name of my childhood pet. Although filling out that form for five people took some time, our kids were doing wonderfully, and I am just grateful for that. Immigration officer had no doubt that we were not planning to stay in India illegally. Technical procedure was behind us and then we walked into the arrivals hall to see….
MY UKRAINIAN FAMILY!!!
My cousins, my aunt, uncle, my nephews and my grandma, all arrived within half an hour of us. So we just had to wait for my mom, my sister and her Indian family to arrive from Kolkata. And finally we were all together! Last time this happened (minus our kids and grandma) was in Paris, in 2007 for my cousin’s wedding.
Ashok, my sister’s father-in-law led us all to our private bus that was taking us to Agra, town where the wedding was actually happening. That is also the place where you will find Taj Mahal.
Our bus was comfortable, clean, with A/C, stocked with bottles of water and fun. We were all tired and jet lagged, but oh so happy to see each other. We wanted to talk for hours!
And we did have hours to talk-haha. The route Delhi-Agra takes about three hours, usually. Since we hit bad traffic and we were in a bus, it took us more like five and a half.
Here are some first photos from India as we saw it from the window of our bus.
Somehow I was not completely shocked. I was prepared by looking up Indian images online before our trip, but still—this is reality which is so different from what my reality is.
Robert’s favorite.
We stopped half way to get some lunch at something like a bus/truck stop.
It was already dark when we finally turned into the place where we were staying—Jaypee Palace. It was like we entered through the gate into a completely different world.
We were greeted with beautiful flower garlands…suddenly everyone’s mood was elated, despite of being tired.
Here is Lyena and I.
And here is Robert making friends with Mokshada (Lyena’s sister-in-law) and Gunjan (Mokshada’s friend).
And here is my beautiful grandma (babushka Maya) who was brave enough to leave Ukraine for the first time in her life to see her last granddaughter get married.
Oh, and look who is here! Still not believing that we actually made it to India.
And here is Mark and Petrusik, playing with each other for the second time in their life. I am amazed at how well all the cousins played, despite the language barrier.
You’d think this was the end of our long first day in India…but oh no, this was just the beginning. Our sleeping schedules changed for a week of our travels. Most nights, no one, not even kids, went to sleep before 1 am! I am just happy I was relaxed enough to just let my strict scheduling instinct go (for the most part).
To Be Continued…
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