Bye Bye Mumbai

Friday, August 12

Dear friends, I am deeply touched by the love, affection and encouragement from so many of you. (Our group now has more than 75 incredible people) I hope I am able to live up to that. 

Yesterday we flew from home and stayed the night in Dubai as there is no direct flight to Iran. We had dinner with my college buddy, Sunil at (you guessed it right) an Indian restaurant 😋😊

Being an Indian and a hard-core Gujju, our life revolves around food. Khavanu sarkhu malse ke nahi? is a very important question for us. We may be eating at the most exclusive place in the world but that nice warm feeling of satisfaction comes only when we have our fix of khakhras, theplas and farsan. One full suitcase of these delicacies cost me a 10 kg excess baggage charge. The guy at the check-in counter quipped, "Sir, you get lots of Indian food in Dubai". 🙄🤣  He must have thought of us as idiots but little did he know the cravings that we would have on the 55 days of our road trip. 

From Dubai it's a one hour flight and we landed in Bandar Abbas, Iran at 7.15 pm local time. The airport is like the ones that we had in a small city 25 years back. 

Our paper visas were stamped instead of our passports which may be a good thing as an Iran entry could lead to uncomfortable questions when entering some countries. 

It's hot (39° C) at 8.30 in the evening. We had a 45 minute bus ride to Hotel Homa. In that limited time I saw good wide roads and traffic in the city. All sign boards of the shops, restaurants etc. are in the local language. Only the road direction signs have English. Most of us are exhausted after the traveling, Priti and I had theplas for dinner in our room.

Once we got WiFi in the hotel, I found that all sites other than Blogger and a few other Google sites are banned in Iran. So today I have logged into my office computer via Anydesk and am writing this.

I will try this method till the time we are in Iran but there may be a gap of a few days it it does not work.