The trip began innocently enough, no hang ups or problems getting to the airport. I think the first harbinger of things to come was when my name was announced over the P.A. system at the Nashville airport. The latter was a first occurence for me and I am proud to report that it was nothing major. The initial flight into JFK was fine as well as the long, long, long (did I say long) flight to Dubai. Now this is the part of the blog where incessant whining or reporting of problematic events would occur, but I am choosing to take the more enlightened path and focus my intial ruminations about India.

Perhaps some foregrounding is important to locate what this trip means for me. This is my second time traveling internationally, and my first time traveling to a so called 2/3 nation. A great portion of my social lens and academic research comes out of liberationist paradigm, so that my observations invariably start there. So I was very interested to see how passengers on the plane would interact with one another particularly when we got to the great city of Dubai. I also was checking my own very Americanized and westernized sensibilites as to how I expected things to run. If I am honest I have a picture of the rest of the world, particular regions known for great poverty as being, shall we say less than effecient. Now for the purposes of this first blog I will not actively engage my own reflective and reflexive moments, rather I want to relay the sights and sounds of India as I have experienced them today.

The most striking experience I’ve had thus far is the crush of poverty that exist around every corner. I went out today with friends and almost from the beginning those soliciting money approached us so bodly and consistently that it was off putting at times. For the most part we were able to gracefully say no and move on, but the persistence of some required a much more gruff rebuff. I struggle now with the decision not to give them anything when clearly it was in my power to do so, but with so many in need it would have been become a situation where once one recieved we would have been marked for the duration of our excursion into the city. This is a theme I am sure to revisit time and time again during this trip so I will move on to more review from the city.

I hesitate here to make any absolute observations about Hyderabad due to my lack of sleep and decreased ability to focus on all of the sensorial imput that is glutting my brain. So suffice it to say that I am impressed by the landscape. Yes, there are parts where it is less than desirable to go, but for the most part I am impressed with the ease and access to get around and the availability to basic needs such as toiletries and the like. Well, I feel the many hours spent on planes, buses, and rickshaw’s coming to a head, so I will say until next time.