First Days in India

The first day of our trip was spent sitting down for hours and hours on end. We flew from Detroit to Amsterdam, then from Amsterdam to Mumbai. We flew for about 16 and a half hours, and emerged from the Mumbai airport unscathed on a late on Wednesday night.

Since safety was the number one priority for this trip, we had a bus waiting for us right when we left the airport. It took a while to get to the YWCA hostel but eventually we were able to find the quaint building and get settled. I got to bed at around 3 am, but I'm sure the sleeping schedule was different for everyone. However, one thing is for sure, everyone was pretty exhausted by that point. Nevertheless, we got up for breakfast and headed out the door at 9:30 am for a tour of Mumbai.

Some of the SWE members on the Overseas trip (not all are depicted here)

The tour mainly consisted of driving by places of interest with the tour guide telling us the history behind Mumbai while we snapped pictures and watched city life rush past us. I wish I had a memory for names because I was only able to write down the names of the places that we stopped to visit. We stopped at the Hanging Gardens, the highest point in Mumbai, Mani Bhavan (a museum about Gandhi) and the Mumbai Train Station.

At the Hanging Gardens

At Mani Bhavan

At Mani Bhavan

More sites around Mumbai were visited such as the Gate to India and an Indian laundry station, however, I did not go on this part of the tour. At the Mumbai train station, me and 3 other Society of Women Engineers (SWE) members hailed a taxi and traveled to the US Consulate for do a presentation on SWE.

The taxi ride was another adventure entirely. Imagine zipping through a bustling city where cars, buses, people, and tuk tuks are rushing all around you. Tuk tuks are quirky small vehicles with no side doors, and one front wheel. Then imagine looking at the road an realizing that even if lanes on the city road do exist, no one seems to care. Throw in a few "close calls" with pedestrians and aggressive cars, and then maybe you can imagine taxi rides in Mumbai.

View from a taxi

View from a taxi

View from a taxi

View from a taxi: Tuk tuk sighting

Anyway, we arrived at the Consulate at around 12:15 pm, 45 minutes early. However, this actually worked in our advantage since we were then able to get lunch before our presentation. The US Consulate was a high security place, which was pretty interesting to see, alas, photos were not allowed. After having lunch, Almitra Kika  the Cultural Affairs Specialist from the US Consulate drove us to the Usha Mittal Institute of Technology at SNDT Women's Studies.

This was where we did our presentation on the Society of Women Engineers. We had around 20 women engineers come to our presentation, most were PhD students and a few were undergraduate students. We talked about National SWE and Michigan SWE in detail and let the audience know that SWE is looking into possibly establishing a chapter in India. This was a great experience because we got to share the value of having an organization like SWE to more people. It seemed like a few were interested in joining SWE after our presentation.

After the presentation, we grabbed another taxi and made our way back to the YWCA. This taxi driver had a slightly wilder driving style. The driver drove over multiple speed bump type deals and it seemed like the bottom of his car was getting slammed into the ground every time. Of course, the cab driver could hear and see our concern, which only resulted in his amusement.

After arriving safely at the hostel, we headed back out once again to run some errands. Some people needed to exchange our money for rupees, buy SIM cards or buy clothes. While 4 SWE members left he main group to do a presentation, the rest of the members collected the necessary supplies for outreach activities.
Which will be discussed later in the blog!

After a long day of adventures, our group had dinner at the YWCA hostel. Mumbai was definitely an interesting city with lots of history, and lots of life. The tour guide we had today mentioned that as you can tell by looking at the buildings, economic extremes sit right next to each other in Mumbai. Mumbai is a city of color and a city of contrast and I am sad to leave it so soon.

Tomorrow we will be flying out to continue the adventure elsewhere!

P.S. Sorry I had more pictures I wanted to post but we're in a time crunch and someone else needs the computer!