India Mission Trip February 22, 2012

22 February

Notes from the highlands

Jeff and I said goodbye to the rest of the group yesterday after visiting the magnificent Taj Mahal and Agra Fort.  We decided to add a train trip to our adventure and so since the last time i wrote we have had 2 train rides, 2 taxi rides and have traveled a total of about 11 hours to a delightful small town high up in the mountains.

After leaving the rest of the team we traveled by train from Agra to Delhi, arriving there at 10.30pm.  Arriving at Delhi station together with, what felt like 10,000 other people was quite an experience.  We then had to find a taxi, negotiate a price, and hope we communicated clearly enough as to where we intended to go!  Needless to stay we survived and did manage to get to our hotel, but, despite a lot of coaching from local people, we really felt like novices as far as train and taxi travel in India.  We spent a very short night in a hotel in Delhi because we needed to leave the hotel at 5.30am to catch our next train which was to Dehra Dun some 200 miles north of Delhi.  The train rides were both comfortable clean and very pleasant.

We were met at Dehra Dun station by Andrew Das (Audrey Engberg's brother) who drove us to Mussoorie - a lovely town that is built on the side of a mountain.  Mussoorie is 6500 feet above sea level and is significantly cooler here - Andrew told us that it snowed here last week!

We have come to Mussorie to visit Andrew and his wife Arparna who runs a home for autistic women.  Andrew showed us around Woodstock school where he works and then we were invited to dinner at their home.  Tomorrow we are going to spend the day with Arparna at the center.