Pretty close to ready

Monday, July 9th 2007

Moving right along, I got my polio booster shot, some maleria pills, my passport renewed, the visa and even the plane tickets!
I leave on the 20th and come back on the 29th.

The passport renewal was supposed to be the big delay, but they actually "expedited" it as promised (and paid extra for). It only took about 2 weeks.

The visa took another week.

Then I studied flights for about 2 weeks to make this as easy as possible. I don't have any problems flying, but I hate sitting around in airports, and this one has quite a few change-overs no matter how I sliced it. Ironically, the longer I delayed booking the actual ticket, the lower the price got. It was around $2500 with Orbitz and Expedia, then a week later it was $1900. A few days later Delta was $1700, NWA was $1675 last friday and today the exact same flight was $1565, so I booked it. It seemingly pays to wait.
I got to pick my seats and it showed that the plane was about 75% full, so I bet they lower the price after a certain percentage of the plane fills up to entice more people book. The fuller the plane, the more money they make, bottom line.

My contact in India is booking my hotel and picking me up at the air port, thats a bonus (I hope).
The picking up part is cool, it can be really tricky on your own in a foreign country for the first time, especially being an American. I can only hope my first night won't be at the "hostel infestion ala rats and mosquitoes".

The next day we are supposed to be road tripping to the first customer site. It just occurred to me that I don't know which side of the road they drive on over there. Guess I'll find out.