It was a VERY last minute trip – which was planned just that day (and only an hours before we left), but luckily it wasn’t too far away (1.5 hours) and it was fun to have an adventure to look forward to. We ended up going and picking Adam up from work about 5:30 (after swimming at the Blairs) and then headed home to quickly shower, change, and pack for our trip. Because it was so last minute though Naveen our driver also hadn’t packed, and so we ended up making a stop by his place for him to grab some items. Adam hadn’t met Naveen’s family – so what was supposed to be a short visit, ended up turning into quite a long one and then went longer when the family wanted us to try warm sweet milk, and then realized they didn’t have any, and then ran to the store for more! Oh how I love the kindness and generosity of Indian families. They so didn’t need to do that, but insisted on it and so we stayed. Naveen’s brother also is an amazing Indian drum player and so we also got our own private viewing of his incredible talents, and then a lesson for me and the kids afterwards on how to beat the drums (its all done with your fingers instead of drum sticks). Man alive was it HARD to figure out and its all in the wrist too. But what a fun and unexpected treat for our family! We so do love Naveens family!
After that we headed out, but realized that none of us had eaten dinner and we all were starting to get grumpy (it was like 9:30 pm by now and WAY past dinner time AND bedtime). We tried to stop at a BBQ place Adam had heard was good, but because it was election day in India – it was closed. đ So we tried looking for other options but the only thing we could find that was fast was KFC. So Naveen stopped by the side of the road where I ran in to order us some food while Adam finished up some work on his laptop.
The problem though is that in India eating at 9:30 or 10:00 at night is the norm and so instead of the place being empty, it was PACKED and the lines were huge. So we ended up having to wait about 20-30 minutes for all our food. CRAZY! When I went back to the car with the food Adam I could tell was DONEZO dealing with kids and was ready to just head straight home. I knew once we all got some food in us though that we all would calm down (grumpiness runs rampant when we all get hungry) and so we all eat, and almost immediately after all the kids fell asleep. And FINALLY we were on our way.
The drive went fairly smoothly for the most part from there, but right before we were supposed to arrive in the city of our destination, Adam remembered he had a urgent email he needed to send out and so we had to go searching for a hot spot. We had just gone through a “toll stop” though and paid money to drive on the road (which had been busy and we’d waited in line for quite awhile) but Naveen new of a Mcdonalds one town back so we ended up turning around and heading back the way we’d come. But…when we got there. There was no wireless. Then we ended up needing to stop again because Naveen was getting hungry. He’d had some fries from our KFC meals but he doesn’t eat meat so it wasn’t enough for him. So we stopped again for that, and then we decided to try a donut shop for a wireless connection – which didn’t end up panning out. AND we had to stop again to go through the road toll, AND pay a 2nd time to go through (they wouldn’t let us use our first receipt). So it made more a long night.
Finally at around 11:30 or 12:00 we were able to find our hotel (after asking several people for directions) but then we found the front gate to the hotel LOCKED. Naveen got out to try to find someone to open the gate, but the guard was asleep and so we had to honk several times and call out to him for while before he finally woke up to open the gate up for us. Funny times!
But we were just happy to finally be at our destination and happy to finally have a place to lay our sleepy heads, and the awesome part was that our hotel room ended up being the professional executive suite and actually had 2 rooms, 2 bathrooms, and a living room! Nice. We were stoked.
Because the kids were all asleep we just carried them up to the room and then piled 3 of them on the king sized bed and then laid out some of our sleeping mats for the 4th child to sleep on. We put Adalynn in the middle of the bed so she wouldn’t accidentally fall out of the bed, but this ended up being a bad thing later because her brothers ended up either kicking her or using her as a pillow! (I witnessed both 2 times in the middle of the night when she woke up crying). Ahhh the joys of road trips!
The hardest part about the night for all of us though was the lack of Air Conditioning! Holy Batman was our hotel room HOT and even though we had fans going full speed from the moment we walked into the room, it was still stifling. Adam and I ended up taking cold showers before going to sleep and then I kept a bucket of water next to my bed so that I could keep putting my hot feet in there to cool them off. I also ended up putting a wet towel on my feet, and then put another one over my shoulders to keep me cool as well.
Then we had to laugh when after going through all that – the power kept going off, which made the fans stop working! Welcome to India! We could tell we were in for a loooong night! I also had forgotten to pack ear plugs to help drown out the noise (and we had the windows all open) so that made things fun too. So needless to say we didn’t get a lot of sleep that night. But it sure made for a memorable night and we sure are loving getting to have these experiences as crazy as they are sometimes! Gotta love India! đ