{"id":2870,"date":"2015-01-22T03:56:50","date_gmt":"2015-01-22T10:56:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?p=2870"},"modified":"2015-01-22T03:58:40","modified_gmt":"2015-01-22T10:58:40","slug":"leaving-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?p=2870","title":{"rendered":"Leaving India"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure id=\"attachment_2871\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2871\" style=\"width: 206px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?attachment_id=2871\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-2871\" target=\"_blank\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"2871\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?attachment_id=2871\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/DSCN1227.jpg?fit=881%2C1280&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"881,1280\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;7.9&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;COOLPIX S6300&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1421756389&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;8.9&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;125&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.0015625&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"The Taj Mahal\" data-image-description=\"&lt;p&gt;First view &amp;#8230; looking through the main gate. This was a pretty overwhelming moment, actually. Brought tears!&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-image-caption=\"&lt;p&gt;The Taj Mahal&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/DSCN1227.jpg?fit=206%2C300&amp;ssl=1\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/DSCN1227.jpg?fit=604%2C877&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2871\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/DSCN1227.jpg?resize=206%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"The Taj Mahal\" width=\"206\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/DSCN1227.jpg?resize=206%2C300&amp;ssl=1 206w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/DSCN1227.jpg?resize=103%2C150&amp;ssl=1 103w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/DSCN1227.jpg?resize=705%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 705w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/DSCN1227.jpg?w=881&amp;ssl=1 881w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 206px) 100vw, 206px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2871\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Taj Mahal<\/figcaption><\/figure>We&#8217;re busy packing suitcases and gathering stuff and trying to find stuff&#8230; In other words, it&#8217;s a bit of a zoo around here at the moment. We have to be at the airport about midnight tonight (January 22nd &#8230; about 11:30 am on Thursday, January 22nd Salt Lake time). Our flight is scheduled to leave at 3:25 am. I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;ll be more than a little sleepy when we actually get on the Virgin Atlantic flight from Mumbai to London Heathrow. We&#8217;ll have a short layover there before leaving for Atlanta, Georgia where we&#8217;re scheduled to land at 2:10 pm on Friday, January 23rd. I&#8217;ve reserved a hotel room at the airport where we&#8217;ll probably crash, and wake up about 2am wondering why we can&#8217;t sleep.<\/p>\n<p>This has been an amazing trip. We&#8217;ve just scratched the surface of what it&#8217;s like to be in India. We&#8217;ve been (literally) run over while walking down the narrow shopping streets, cringed as our driver navigated through traffic (and being absolutely sure that we&#8217;ll die in the process), marveled at the traffic and traffic noise, and been pleasantly surprised at the friendliness and helpfulness of the Indian people. We&#8217;ve experienced smells that range from &#8220;wow&#8221; to &#8220;oh dear&#8221; and experienced close-up the lack of personal space while being out and about. We&#8217;ve seen Hindu and Jain temples, Muslim mosques, Catholic churches, a Zoroastrian Thread Ceremony celebration, and most delightfully, visited the Taj Mahal. It&#8217;s actually been rather overwhelming. Our daughter has gone above and beyond cramming as much as possible into our short time here.<\/p>\n<p>And, suddenly, it&#8217;s time to leave. Just like that, the two weeks are over and we&#8217;re leaving. We&#8217;ll most likely never be back. But I don&#8217;t think we&#8217;ve left anything undone that we needed to do, nothing unseen that we needed to see, and nothing unheard that we wanted to hear. I&#8217;ve got several hundred pictures to sort through and post in future blog entries. It&#8217;ll be fun to relive some of these memories.<\/p>\n<p>But, I&#8217;m also looking forward to some good old American fast food&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;re busy packing suitcases and gathering stuff and trying to find stuff&#8230; In other words, it&#8217;s a bit of a zoo around here at the moment. We have to be at the airport about midnight tonight (January 22nd &#8230; about 11:30 am on Thursday, January 22nd Salt Lake time). Our flight is scheduled to leave &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?p=2870\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Leaving India<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pnKxs-Ki","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2870"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2874,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2870\/revisions\/2874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}