Moving About India

I am in India interviewing people related to a service Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). These three letters are used in many parts of the world with immediate recognition, but often are not understood in others. The term just helps to distinguish the support base of an organization.

We spent the morning interviewing staff and hearing of the wonderful accomplishments that are happening through MCCI, an Indian based NGO. It is interesting to hear how they are helping farmers conserve rain water and grow a second crop in a year by simply changing 5% of their plot into a retention pond. The water gathers in the retention pond rather than just becoming run-off and it revitalizes the soil for a second planting.

We finished our interviews in time for lunch at 1:00 p.m. and then had a break before we left for the airport at 2:30 p.m. for a 5:00 p.m. flight. We soon wondered if we were going to get there by that time as we became ensnarled in traffic on the streets of Kolkata. The very slow start finally broke free and we moved on to our destination.

All of the processing for boarding a flight went as normal. I was also able to check about frequent flier miles with the last airline I flew with and had my account credited for that flight. Today we were flying SpiceJet. They don’t have a frequent flier program as of yet but we eventually boarded a plane that was completely full – six seats across and possibly 32 rows. We were in row 26.

We flew to the new Shamshabad Airport, AP. It replaces the Hyderabad Airport. It was just brought into service a year ago. It is one of the airports that serves the “silicon valley” area of India. From all I saw it would rival most any airport in the world. We moved through our process very smoothly and soon found the person who had come to pick us up and take us to our lodging place.

It seems that as we travel to different areas we are “bringing the rains with us.” They arrived in Kolkata and they were having their first hard rain in Shamshabad as well. It is remarkable how refreshing the rains are after a long period of dry and hot weather.

Our hosts were ready to give us supper and to show us to our rooms in what used to be the mission house on this property. We will see more of the campus and drive to further places in this area tomorrow.