A Trip to Remember

Hi everybody,

We're all back home safe and sound after our 28 hour journey from Hyderabad's runway to Cleveland's runway. Just woke up and realized that I didn't get any mosquito bites last night or hear any of the traffic horns this morning from India's streets. There's no delicious South Indian breakfast awaiting me either. Shouldn't I have been offered Indian tea or coffee about 3 times by this time of the morning? Definitely glad to be back, but at the same time, I'm really going to miss these past several weeks in India.

The group has been simply fantastic. There's such a gel between all of the members. We've really had some great laughs. I can honestly say that everybody has probably laughed their quota for the year over the past three weeks alone. Lots of character and personality in each person - so many jokes/stories - truly spectacular! I'm very confident that we've all developed lifelong friendships as a result of this trip.

Even beyond our group, the physicians, medical staff, family, and friends that we interacted with while in India were always delightful company. It was always enlightening to learn more about each one of them and their life experiences.

Our program exposures included tremendous diversity including government hospitals, private hospitals, rural hospitals, research facilities, community outreach programs, etc. Places we ended up visiting included Sivananda Rehabilitation Home, NIMS, Osmania General Hospital, Sir Ronald Ross Institute of Tropical and Communicable Diseases (aka Fever Hospital), Mediciti Hospital, CCMB (Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology), and Kamineni Hospital.

Diseases were abundant - in addition to what has been mentioned previously throughout this blog, we went to the Fever Hospital on Friday and saw patients with Dengue, Diphtheria/Tetanus, Malaria, Measles/Mumps, TB, and a variety of acute diarrhea syndromes (these patients even had their own "acute diarrhea beds"). Hopefully, none of us breaks out with a fever in the next week - differential would be ridiculous!

On top of our daytime experiences, we explored India despite the blasts that took place while we there. List of visited sights included the Golkonda Fort and Charminar in Hyderabad as well as Gandhi's house, Hanging Gardens, Elephanta Caves, and various temples in Mumbai. We also spent our evenings and weekends simply enjoying our time together from late night chats to watching sports like Cricket to playing card games like King's Peasant to watching movies like the Godfather to playing our favorite Indian game Carrom (Wikipedia - Carrom or carroms is a family of tabletop games sharing a similarity in that their mechanics lie somewhere between billiards and table Shuffleboard. The game has various other names around the world, including carrum, carum, karam, karom, karum, and "Indian finger billiards").

Food was beyond lip smacking - favorites included chilli paneer gravy, vegetable manchurian, hot and sour soup, chicken 65, guava, aavakkai, butterscotch ice cream, idli, sambar, various chutneys, mango, pomegranate, and essentially all of the members of the potato family.

This has truly been a trip to remember - a chapter of my life that will always be a favorite to reflect upon for the rest of my life. It has broadened my horizons and given me refreshing perspective. I'm already looking forward to the potential Case India Trips - Part 2 (aka CIT 2).

Peace and love,

Vijay