Blog Date (Dec 22, 2007)
After my earlier trip to India, I stepped out of Monterey with a lot of apprehension and worry. Anyway to summarize here are some of the highlights.

1) My carry-on was not approved by Cathay-Pacific (CP) at SFO. So my local area friend got me another bag that I had to use and thus avoid the $100 extra baggage fee.

2) The SFO approved carry-on was rejected by HK airport security as being too big. I thus had to get a special tag from the CP folks in HK to board.

3) I was not allowed to carry the same bag at Bangkok by Thai Airways; instead I had to check it in. When I arrived in Calcutta this carry-on was the last to get off the belt.

I felt I had something to be proud of, “last Thai Airways passenger out of the Calcutta airport at night"

4) On arriving in Tollygonge, the Calcutta suburb where we reside, I found a half-asleep fatter Sangita. She was not able to find a single good gym near her home and as a result had not worked out for like 3 months.

5) On opening one of the 2 large suitcases we found that the liquor bottles had smashed into pieces spilling all the contents on Sangita's saris and thus staining some of them. I was carrying Sangita's saris from Monterey to Calcutta for dry cleaning purposes.

6) I had a day to rest and we then left for another city called Durgapur. This is where Sangita spent her school days till graduation (high-school). We were forced to take the train as there are no airports in Durgapur. My last Indian train ride was in the year 1997 so this was quite interesting. We got large seats and meals all served to us for the 2 hour ride.

7) At Durgapur we were hosted by Sangita's cousin who still works at the same institute as her dad. He is an engineer doing research for the Indian government. Sangita's cousin and his wife/son were not letting us check into a hotel but we really wanted to not impose and stay with more western comfort. Finally we found “Ginger" (gingerhotels.com) and really enjoyed our stay. So our nights were spent at the hotel and all day long we were with relatives.