Andrew Ash

I actually returned from India a bit over two weeks ago, but the standard school fair has been keeping me quite busy. Apart from the research symposium mentioned below (slides coming soon?), I also had to: grade HW, do CS2200 HW, Databases project, 8-10pg PUBP paper, open the TA application, 2200 Project, Research demonstration, Research presentation, Prob/Stat HW, and a 2200 Test. And I was supposed to be playing piano for church and competing in a debate tournament over that weekend, but those just weren’t able to happen…

The India trip was a one-week Friday evening to Sunday morning father-son trip. My dad and I left Atlanta for our 8,500 mile, 17 hour direct flight Atlanta-Mumbai. After sleeping nicely, we arrived at Mumbai’s international airport, met our local contact Pradeep, and made it to the hotel via taxi. Since it was only midnight local time (9:30 in the morning on our bodies!) we went out for some “breakfast”. We spent the next couple days wandering around the back roads of Mumbai, hitting up the highlights of Haji Ali, Sassoon Docks, Gateway to India Arch, Elephanta Island, Mani Bhavan (Gandhi’s house), Cafe Leopold, the Taj Mahal Hotel, and all sorts of intriguing back roads. We have this tendency of tryin to avoid doing just the “tourist thing” when visiting other countries, being ferried around by vehicle from site to site without getting a true experience for the flavor of a country’s local culture.

After Mumbai we took a domestic flight down to Coimbature and taxi’d up to Ooty, where we were able to meet with a couple from our church working on Freedom Firm, an organization working for “rescue, restoration, and justice for victims of sex trafficking”. Really powerful work there. Also while in Ooty we woke up early to track elephants and tigers in a nature preserve, hiked the 3hr Cooley trail (and ran away from a lone male elephant), and visited the tea museum and a local tea factory. This is also where Dad got sick and we lost a morning due to illness. Though it slowed us down, it was a nice break from just experiencing and offered the chance for reflection. How much does experience matter if you can’t take those experiences and forge them into coherency for actually impacting your life?

Leaving Ooty via taxi, we made our way to Mysore to see the palace there, but had to miss it because we’d lost so much time that morning. We ended up barely making it to Bangalore in time to make the overnight train up to Hyderabad. What a fantastic experience! In Hyderabad we stayed at Pradeep’s parents’ house, which had a welcome sense of familiarity even though we’d never been to the place. Although much of our siteseeing in Bangalore didn’t work out, we were able to meet up with some great guys at India Missions Association, where Pradeep’s parents work.

There’s certainly way too much for me to able to fit all of my experiences in today, so maybe I’ll have more posts in the future on this wonderful opportunity to visit India I had.