My Trip to New Delhi & Hyderabad

I am in New Delhi doing an assignment which requires me to do an organization capacity assessment of 5 research institutions in India to ascertain their capacity to receive research grants.

The journey was interesting as the flight I took had a group of tourists (religious pilgrimage to Buddhist sites in India) of whom a majority were first time flyers. So it was fascinating to see the excitement in their faces as the flight progressed; from the smallest kid to the old folk (Gray haired men and women who were in their late sixties) started to peer through the windows to steal a glimpse of the geographic features below. I instantly recalled my first flight (which I took to the UK) when I was just a teenager.

I had dreams of sleeping in the flight; however the rest of the passengers were too excited to be quiet. They were talking in loud voices and moving about so much that sleeping was not an option.

I arrived in New Delhi and managed to go through the immigration very fast and managed to get my luggage fast as well. However when I went out of the airport my pick up had not arrived; so after waiting for half an hour I took a prepaid taxi to the hotel. As a seasoned traveler to New Delhi, I advice all travelers to Delhi to take a prepaid taxi and always have the hotel name and address handy. Also have the telephone number of the hotel so that the taxi driver can call (they all have mobiles) the hotel and get directions if he does not know the place exactly. So without too much of looking around the driver found the hotel.

My past experiences with research organizations have been limited to engaging them for research in preparation for various assignments. I am looking forward to this assignment as this is the first time I will be doing work for research organizations.