Hi all, my name’s Dale. I’m a friend of Chris and Laura’s from way back and I’m going to India.

Here’s a little back­ground for my trip:

My grand­mother was the daugh­ter of a Scottish Protestant min­is­ter sta­tioned in India during the first half of the 20^th Century. She was born and raised in Seoni, India, at the Mission Compound, which was built by my great grand­father. The com­pound still stands today and includes a school, an orphan­age, a hos­pital and a church (obvi­ously). Seoni also happens to be the town from Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book.

This is the school my great-grandfather built in Seoni, India. We’re going to go check it out.

I grew up listen­ing to my grandmother’s stories of crafty monkeys, spit­ting camels and her pet cobra-killing mon­goose, and it’s long been a dream of mine to visit India.

Today, I’m flying into Dehli (reportedly one of the worst air­ports in the world) with my mother, Margie, father, Kim and sister, Dana. Dana is living in Dublin right now, which is cur­rently under a cloud of vol­canic ash, so we’re hoping she makes it without too much of a delay.

We’ll be staying in Dehli for for four days before attend­ing the wedding of the grand­daugh­ter of two orphans who grew up in the Mission Compound.

After the wedding we’ll be heading to Jaipur for a day, then to Agra to see the Taj Mahal (these two cities along with Delhi are referred to as the Golden Triangle).

We’ll then be taking a train down to Seoni, where we’ll be staying in a nearby tiger reserve at night (where my great-grandfather hunted tigers before they had “nature reserves”) and vis­it­ing the Mission Compound during the day.

After Seoni we’ll be taking a train up to Mumbai where we’ll check Bollywood out for a couple days before we head back to Vancouver.

Rock on!

Related posts:

1. Two Points of the Golden Triangle