India Part 1

My main passion in life is traveling. I just love to go to new places and I almost never want to go back to the same place (except when my arm is twisted to go on a cruise with my brother). This year I had the opportunity to go to India and Dubai in May. As soon as I heard about the trip I had decided within 10 minutes that I needed to find a way to go. With much pleading and brown nosing of my bosses I was allowed to take two weeks off of work. Just getting ready for the trip was hectic as I graduated from college with my MBA on Friday night before my long plane ride to India on Saturday.

The commute to India was extremely long. We left Indianapolis at 12:30 on Saturday, but we had to be at the airport at 10:30am...so this is when the clock starts. We arrive at JFK and we now have an 8 hour layover...our next plane doesn't depart until 11pm on Saturday night. We had a full day of traveling before we even left the states. We had to pick up our luggage and it appeared that 1/2 of the groups luggage did not make it to JFK. I have to wonder how this could of happened as this was a direct flight. All of the lost luggage showed up about 8pm on a flight from Atlanta. Apparently our plane from Indy was overweight and their bags were sent to JFK via Atlanta.


We board the extremely large Emerites (Airline from the UAE) plane. The plan has 4 center seats and three seats on each side of the aisle, this means that there were 10 people across. This ride was 12:45 minutes long. We landed in Dubai for about 3 hours, I was very loopy by this time and my friends and I immediately went in search of food and decided that breakfast would consist of a diary queen kit kat blizzard. It was little bites of heaven after the horrid plane food. Then we boarded another flight that took us to Dubai and this ride was about 3 hours. So my total travel time was about 31hours and 15 minutes. There is one other detail that I should add. I NEVER sleep on the plane EVER. So I was a zombie by the time I reached India. We took an hour bus ride to our hotel and got to sleep for about 5 hours. My alarm clock didn't work so we were woke by the phone and Steve (UINDY Facility Member) calling us to meet the group for our first activity. I hate having to rush to get ready. My head was very fuzzy.


Our first activity in India was to visit the Jaipuria Institute of Management. This is an Indian version of a MBA school. It was amazing how this looked like any ordinary school in America. The facility of the school gave us a lecture on how the school is run, the qualifications of the students to attend the school and answered any questions that we had. The were so open and informative. When we visited China last year...the people were not very willing to talk to us and they only gave us surface information. I feel like I got a real sense of what going to school would be like there.





This is a photo of the group in the hallway. The man in the front is Dr. J.D Singh. He is the one who lead most of the discussions and answered many questions. He spoke English very well and was very easy to understand. In the left is Gloria and you will notice that she has a red dot on her forehead. The did this to all of us when we arrived. It was a gesture of welcome. They did this to us several places that we went.

This is one of their student computer labs. They are open pretty long hours but not 24 hours.

They had this poster up in their cafeteria. I found it amusing that I traveled 31 hours to see a motivational propaganda poster. I guess those people who make them are raking in the dough.

This is one of their dorm rooms. Each room had a private bathroom. The rooms looked pretty nice compared to some of them at home. Currently they only have dorm room for female students...so all of the men commute.

This is our whole group in the library. It includes everyone who was on our trip as well as all of the facility members from the Jaipuria school that attend our meeting.


I love being able to take this kind of trip that adds learning elements along with the vacation fun. Some of my fondest memories of this trip involve the business aspects. More to come soon.