Last Saturday, Greg, Ellie and I hired a car to take us out of the city and into the mountains. We were interested in seeing the 14th century Sinhagad Fort that once protected the region from Mughal invasions. The fort is only about 30 km from the city center, but with road conditions and the mass of traffic, it still took about 2 hours to wind our way up the steep mountainside. Pune is only the eighth largest city in India, but with a population of 2.5 million people, it is still a vast sprawling metropolis that has swallowed up many small villages around the mountains.
Before Ellie was born, you could say that Greg and I lived a nomadic life. We moved abroad, traveled as much as we could, and tried to throw ourselves at every adventure that presented itself. But then, as babies often do, Ellie changed everything. People began remarking that our traveling days were over now that we had a tiny third wheel along for the ride. And certainly, for a while we were content to stay put as time and logistics became exponentially more difficult. But I just never understood why, if traveling was such an important part of our lives before, having kids should change that. If anything, our desire to experience new places intensified once we promised to give our little girl as much of the world as we could.
We’ve officially been here one entire week, so I thought I would share some snapshots of our life the past 7 days. Of course Greg has been working a lot, but Elliotte and I have tried to get out and explore as much as possible…not exactly easy when crossing the road requires us to take our lives in our own hands. We’ll get better at it, I’m sure. Read on
On Thursday morning we arrived at DTW around 6:45am for our 8:30am connection to Chicago. After printing our boarding passes and dropping off our baggage, we made our way to security where we were shuttled through the TSA pre-check line. Although we haven’t applied for the pre-check program, we are apparently frequent enough fliers on Delta to be randomly selected and let me tell you it was awesome! No removing shoes or belts, laptops can stay in their bags, the lines are significantly shorter and you don’t have to wait for someone to swab your hands if you are carrying a kiddo. If you are at all a frequent flier and eligible for the pre-check program, do it! Getting through security was easily the best part of our day. Everything went down hill from there…
We wandered the tree-lined streets of GK-II, ate in an Italian restaurant, and then retreated into the relative quiet of our clean and comfortable guesthouse. Then the next day we lazed around Lodi Gardens, which is a little like Central Park, if Central Park had 15th-century Afghan tombs and bright green parrots everywhere. We grabbed an auto-rickshaw bound for teeming Old Delhi to catch the sunset at India’s largest mosque and then ate some of the best chicken we’ve ever had in one of Chadni Chowk’s back-alley restaurants. Then it was time to head back. It took several hours, three different drivers, and a couple of threats (for good measure) to get us all the way from Old Delhi to GK-II. It was a long journey, but not as long as the next one will be. We are going home.
