T-minus 8 days (not that I am counting or anything)

Hi y'all:

Well, here is it, Saturday morning at 6:20 a.m. and the Bigelows are enjoying a relaxing start to the weekend. D left for the pool at 5:45, I am dressed and ready to go run a 10k....but the little guy is asleep at least (not for long though, based on the sounds coming from the monitor). Good thing we are all relaxing so much huh?

Per the request of friends with whom we had dinner last night we are starting up this blog to track our trip to India for Yash and Vinnie's wedding. We leave in 8 days and I am so excited that I can hardly even sleep. Actually, we leave here on Tuesday to head to Cleveland to drop off the little guy with his fab grandparents and then we leave for India from there. (Lest you are wondering, the cat will be in the far-more-capable-than-my-own hands of Auntie A.)

So right now our bedroom looks like a bomb went off in it as we pack to get ready to go, and we are filling our days with, well, a lot of shopping. But soon this blog will be populated with pics of the beautiful sights of India.

To fill in the blanks on our trip, here is a little preview of what we think our itinerary is going to be. I say think because we have put ourselves squarely (and happily so) into the hands of our hosts Y and V. And in the midst of planning a multi-day wedding they have taken on the planning of our trip with great gusto, so I am sure it is going to be great.

So we leave Cleveland on June 29th. After 24 hours of travelling we land in Chennai at 11:45 p.m. on June 30th. So we will get to the hotel at oh, say, 2 a.m. on the 1st. Then we have a nap. On the first we are going to bustle around shopping so that we can buy all of the requisite indian clothing that we need for the wedding the following week and we are going to go to the groom's house for lunch. Yum. On the 2nd we take an early flight up to Delhi and start our sightseeing. After a day or two there we will drive to Agra to go to the Taj Mahal. I cannot begin to tell you how much I am looking forwad to that. After years of looking at photos of it in my art history books I can scarcely believe that I am going to get to see it in all its glory. On the 4th we head to Jaipur, which has a lot of beautiful historic sights to offer. All in all these three cities make up what is called the "Golden Triangle" because of the density of temples and palaces and other sights there are in the area. So after Jaipur we fly back to Chennai on the 5th and head directly to a much-needed break at a fancy schmancy beach resort about 65k from the city. Then after a couple of days we head back to Chennai and the wedding begins on the 8th. We have been told to expect that the parties will often go all night, so we will be knee deep in wedding (my dream come true) from the 8th until the 12th, when we head straight from the reception to the plane....at 1:45 a.m.!

So, long story short, if you don't hear from us for a week or two after we get home, it is because we are sleeping! But boy is it going to be worth it!

Tomorrow I will post a little description of the wedding that the bride wrote up for us.