The India Trip: Introduction

Once again I applied to be a delegate at the Space Generation Congress. This year, it, along with the International Astronautical Congress and the SEDS International Conference, were held in India. I was only home for three weeks before I had to get on another plane and have jet lag kick me in the face again. Vacations are for the weak.

My plans for getting to India started last March and were almost eradicated at the last minute. I received an email from the Space Generation email list about a call for abstracts for the IAC. I figured that I had something to say about being the Chief Engineer at the Mars Desert Research Station, and the only way I could foresee getting funded to go to these conferences was to have something to present. I was also feeling slightly cocky because I had just gotten accepted into the ISU in China, so my mood was understandably high when I wrote and submitted the abstract. Not only was it the vaguest abstract I’ve ever seen, my idea for the paper really would have said nothing more than an account of my experiences, totally inappropriate for a conference paper, let alone the biggest astronautical congress in the world. Once this realization occurred my ego was knocked back to peasant status in no time and has stayed there ever since.

Despite that, I am proud to say this is the first free trip I have ever taken, fully funded because several sources. I managed to get funding from UCF’s Student Government Association to attend SGC, SETI to present my MDRS paper, ISU to present the Team Project report, and SEDS-USA to be a representative at the SEDS-IC. I had planned to use a scholarship through my department at UCF to pay for the rest of the trip, but thankfully (oh so thankfully) my ISU Team Project Chair, Jim Burke, donated the rest of my travel expenses. Even with four other sources of funding, he alone paid for more than 60% of this trip, and I cannot thank him enough for the opportunity to go to these three conferences.

However, all was almost lost in the last hour. Because I got back from China so close to the start of the trip, I did not have much time to get my visa for India. I sent my passport and visa application to Washington DC not long after I got home, thinking three weeks would be enough time, especially since their website advertised a 5-day waiting period, and fellow ISU students in DC got their visas in one day. I was wrong. I sent it early in case there was a problem, and sure enough there was; I sent photos on plain paper instead of photo paper, and they called me and demanded better images. This set the process back almost a week. On the Friday before I left (my flight was Tuesday early afternoon), the return envelope was not in the FedEx tracking system.

My official savior? My brother. He not only went down to the Indian consulate on Monday morning to see why they hadn’t finished, he went again in the afternoon to overnight airmail it to my house with AM delivery. I literally had my passport and visa in my hands 15 minutes before I left for the airport. The phrase “by the skin of his teeth” doesn’t quite do the situation justice.

I arrived in Frankfurt, Germany for my connecting flight to Hyderabad on time to meet several Space Gen people that were on the same flight. What does someone like me do in the Frankfurt airport when there’s a two-hour layover? Legally enjoy a fine German beer, that’s what! At least I got to meet a few of my fellow delegates before we arrived.

The first thing I noticed about India after exiting the airport was how crowded it was. I was not surprised, considering I had just been to China. However, the next realization greatly surprised me. Not more than 10 seconds after exiting the airport, I was approached by a child beggar. I expected this, but here’s what’s surprising; the kid had nicer clothes on than I did! This has been true for a lot of the beggar’s I’ve seen, although just because the threads are classier than mine doesn’t mean they’re cleaner. I think it is safe to assume that India is the land of fancy schmancy everyday clothes. Almost all men have collared shirts, generally in some form of plaid (although not lumberjack style), and almost all women have very colorful scarves and dresses.

We arrived at the hotel at 2am. The next day I woke up at 6am. Hello circadian rhythm disruption.