Arrival in Bangalore

Our flight from Salt Lake City to Bangalore was LONG. We left Provo at 12:30 on Monday, April 9 and caught our 3:30 flight. The flight took us to Chicago, then to London (England), and finally to Bangalore, arriving at 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday, April 11 (Bangalore time). That would be 5:00 p.m. Tuesday, April 10. We were tired. This is the two of us leaving the airport at Bangalore.

After arriving, we rested for a few hours; then we went out to eat at an Indian restaurant. The Wigg's took us. The Wigg's are the mission couple who work in the mission office. Elder Wigg is in the above picture.

Our apartment will not be ready until May 1st, so we are staying with the Wigg's until Thursday, April 19th. We need to be in Coimbatore to register, so we will stay in an apartment that two young missionaries were supposed to have. They will stay with two other young missionaries until we move into our apartment. We spent the rest of the week spending some time at the mission office, helping when we could and doing some tourist activities.

On Thursday, April 12, we went for an auto ride. An auto is a three-wheeled vechile used to transport people. The traffice here is total chaos; however, it is organized chaos, if there can be such a thing.

This is an auto; they dart in and out of traffic, along with all the other vehicles and pedestrians on the road. We have never seen so much traffic and people. The traffic here has often been compared to a river because it goes where ever there is a place for it to go. If the road has two designated lanes, the vehicles will make it into 4.

One of the places we went on our auto ride was to the  Lalbagh park, where we saw several of these:

Friday morning was spent at the mission office, and Sister Wigg and Sister Tiefenbach went shopping for an hour to get food for the conference that President Funk (the president of the India Bangalore Mission) is having with the missionary couples. In the evening we and the Wigg's went for a walk and came accross this animal by the sidewalk:

On Saturday, we were escorted to Mysore by Karthik, a young friend of the Wigg's. He was an excellent driver, weaving through the traffic congestion with ease. In Mysore, we went to a palace, and we bought a saree.

Apparently, Mysore is famous for its silk.

We also drove up Chamundi Hill and enjoyed the view. The view would have been better had the smog not been so bad.

India is very different from Regina. Seeing young children walking in the middle of traffic trying to sell trinkets to the motorist and seeing all the people working and living in little shanties made me grateful for the things that we have. We could also learn from these people because despite their poor situation, they seem to enjoy life. We should all take a moment to thank our Heavenly Father for the blessings that we have.