I landed in Mumbai at 9:30 pm on Friday. Around 10:30, I found Anil and Ashok with the help of three different people who let me borrow their cell phones. It was reassuring to be greeted by people who were looking out for me.
As we were leaving the airport, I realized that I needed to pee. I figured that when we stopped for sodas, I could take care of that. For the next hour, I got an interesting tour of Mumbai as we tried to find the correct road from the airport to Pune. We pulled a number of u-turns. I would have sworn we were going in circles. By the time we finally found the right road, I was sweating profusely, tears were streaming down my cheeks, and my kidneys were aching. Ashok took pity on me and pulled over on the side of the highway underneath a billboard where there was a small alley and a mound of dirt. I hopped out of the car without hesitation. There I was, peeing in an alley/drainage ditch on the side of the highway in Mumbai.
What a welcome to India.
An hour and a half later at 1 am, we finally reached the gas station. It reminded me of the rest areas along I-95, only bigger and busier. In some places, it may have qualified as a village or small city. Leaving the gas station, we hit traffic going over the mountain pass. The highway was jammed with trucks and buses. Sick of the nearly standstill traffic, Ashok decided to create a fourth lane of traffic on the three-lane highway.
At 3:30 am, we reached Pune and the Deep Griha Cultural Center. After 29 hours of travel, I was glad to have a place to put my feet up and sleep.
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