Final Entry

Apologies for the delay in posting this final entry. After graduation I was on the road for the entire month of May. In June, I've been getting myself settled in Hawaii and am just now getting around to posting these final pictures. Enjoy!



(1 May) With graduation behind us, it was time to complete one last piece of business before beginning a long-awaited month of leave travel. On April 26th I took my last drive down to Coimbatore to start the process of getting back to the US. First stop was back to New Delhi, where I needed to clear the US Embassy. After finishing up my out-processing in a couple of days, I began a solid month of leave to reward myself for having completed staff college without committing arson.



Delhi in May is a miserable place, but the cold beer and cool waters of the hotel pool eased me into the climate. A week into my leave, my buddy Bobby from the US came out to visit. It was his first visit to South Asia, and I was eager to show him my home country for the last twelve months. We stuck to the standard tourist sites in Delhi:

Humayun's Tomb

The Qutb Minar, a minaret at one of the oldest mosques in India.

India Gate

View of the old city from the minarets of the Jama Masjid.

Me at the Jama Masjid, largest mosque in India.

Market crowds in old Delhi.

Gandhi's cremation site at the Rajghat.

The highlight of the Delhi trip was seeing Bobby's face the first time some guy thrust a basket of cobras in front of him. We later found another guy charming cobras and took a picture.

On the last day of our Delhi trip, some of my friends from staff college took us out to a sports brewpub in Gurgaon, a suburb of Delhi. Apparently this is the first brewpub in India. Hopefully they'll catch on, because the beer was good and so was the cricket. Here I am with Phady, Bobby, AJ and Vikas.

The next morning, Bobby and I jumped on a train from New Delhi to Agra. The train stations were typical Indian mass transit chaos, but our first-class car was very comfortable. Our guide met us at the Agra station and drove us to the hotel for check-in. We stayed at the Oberoi Amar Vilas, and it was probably the nicest hotel I'll ever stay at in my life. If you can afford it, even for one night, I highly recommend it. We then headed out to see the main sight in Agra, the world-famous Taj Mahal.

This place is truly as beautiful as it is hyped to be.

With Bobby in front of the Taj.

View of the Taj from our hotel. Every window was a postcard.

After seeing the Taj, we did some shopping and stopped by the old Agra Fort, which served as the head of government for the Mughal emperors:

Me and Bobby in front of one of the many Fort buildings.

One of the emperor's outdoor audience chambers.

Outer walls of the fort.

We had planned on spending two days in Agra, but we soon found out that the state election day was going to be held in two days time and that all tourist locations would probably closed on that day. So we now had to cram the remaining final two days of sight-seeing in India into a single day. The next morning we woke up early and drove to our next location, Fatehpur Sikri.

Fatehpur Sikri is located along the road from Agra to Jaipur. This city was created by one of the Mughal emperors to serve as his capital city. He built his city here after a fortune teller correctly predicted that he would have a son. The city was soon deserted, however, after they realized there was no water there.

Sitting on the emperor's pedestal.

Inside the city mosque, with a shrine (in white marble) to the city's fortune teller.

Gallery where the emperor's many wives would watch the day's entertainment.

Gateway

After spending a couple of hours at Fatehpur Sikri, we jumped back onto the main road and continued on toward our destination for the day, the city of Jaipur. On the outskirts of the city we stopped to visit the remains of the Amber Fort. This fort was used as a palace by the local princes.

View of the fort from the road below.

Various structures within the fort.

The main gate to the fort.

From Amber, we continued our whirlwind day of touring at our final stop of the day in Jaipur. Jaipur is located in Rajasthan, one of the hottest states in India. It's a bit to the east of the actual desert, but the heat of the day relentlessly baked us. Throughout Jaipur there are many small palaces used by the royal families of Jaipur.

The royal family also believed heavily in astrology and astronomy, and there is a large park in the city center filled with huge stone instruments used to measure the stars and tell time called the Jantar Mantar.

Huge sundial

Instrument for calculating the position of constellations.

The final site that we toured in Jaipur was the city palace. This palace still houses the current royal family of Jaipur. Assorted palace pictures:

After sight-seeing, we checked in at our hotel for the night, had dinner (and apparently some bacteria that gave both of us Delhi belly for the next three days) and got some rest in an air-conditioned room.

The next morning we began the drive back to Delhi. We drove about four hours before stopping off at our final hotel for the last night in India. The hotel is a remodeled old fort-palace, and it made for a very unique place to stay. If you're ever looking for an interesting place to stay a couple of hours outside of Delhi, check out the Neemrana Fort-Palace.

View of the fort from the village below.

Fort-palace close up.

Camel rides were available. We passed on the ride, but had to take a picture.

Near the village of Neemrana was this ancient stepwell. This structure allowed people to go deep into the earth to retrieve water. The best way to describe it is that it's like an inside-out skyscraper that goes down into the ground.

After staying a single night in Neemrana, we got up early again the next morning to finish the drive to Delhi where we would catch a flight to our next destination, Kathmandu. My trip to Nepal will be documented back on my regular website at http://www.bourquin.org/ in the near future. After four days in Nepal, Bobby and I flew back to Delhi, had a nine-hour layover, and then began another 16+ hours of flying to get back to the United States.

If you've been keeping track of my journey this far, then thanks for reading and I hope you found it mildly entertaining. My year in India was at times funny, bizarre, educational, frustrating, heart-warming, and will always be a unique experience in my life. I made many good friendships there that I know I will continue to maintain well into the future. Special thanks go out to my girlfriend Jodi, who stuck by me throughout a year apart in just about the farthest place I could go from her. Her care packages and calls kept me going through the worst times and I will always be grateful to her. I'm very happy to be back in the US, but look forward to someday (though not too soon!) returning to visit all of my friends in India.

End of Course, Part Three

And finally, Graduation Day arrived. As is fitting of DSSC, we were first required to go through three full rehearsals to prepare ourselves for marching on-stage and receiving our parchments. The College would pass up no chance to make our lives just a little more miserable. Anyway, although we were all thrilled to be finally done with the College and on our way back to our homes, it was bittersweet to be leaving so many new-found close friends. I look forward to visiting them all in the near future.

Some assorted pictures with friends, post-graduation:

With Vikas, Indian Army

Me and Phady, Indian Air Force

With Jose, Chilean Navy

With Job, Indian Navy

Me and Jerome, Lesotho Army

Group Photo: Tim (UK), Chris (Singapore), Jeff, Alex (UK), Ki-Nam (Korea), Ruwan (Sri Lanka), me, Zul (Malaysia), Dave (Australia), Riva (Indonesia), Shamim (Bangladesh), Ranjith (Sri Lanka), Ashish (Nepal) and Lanka (Sri Lanka)

With Roj, Nepal Army; Alim, Bangladesh Army; Ashish Nepal, Army; and Siddique, Bangladesh Navy

Me and Anurag, Indian Navy, and his wife Sonia

With Manpreet, Indian Army, and his wife Neelu

With Manish and Sudeep, Indian Air Force, Anu, and Bhushan, Indian Navy

Posing with our flags...Chris, Singapore Air Force and Alex, Royal Air Force

Me and Bhushan, Indian Navy

With Amin and Naeem, Afghanistan Army

With graduation behind us, it was time to say our final good-byes to Wellington. Before heading back to the US though, I had one last trip to make to Delhi and northern India...

End of Course, Part Two

And more parties...

With Rana and my sponsor student, Gangs

At Jeff's house: Me, Prashant, Jazna, Alex, Jeff, the Wahis and Jose

At Dave and Vanessa's ANZAC Day party...

Me and Ruslan

With my Sri Lankan buds, Ranjith and Lanka.

Group photo: Tim, Ruslan, me, Dave, Shamim, Alex, Jeff, Siti, Ranjith and Michael

Group photo #2: Alex, Dave, Ranjith, me, Jeff, Lanka and Jose

And some other last moments in and around Wellington:

Our last official social function...cocktails with the Commandant: Roj, Ruslan, Alim, me, Ashish, Lanka and Siti

Foreign officers gather for a group photo at the final Foreign Student Presentation for Zambia.

Every week the foreign officers got together to play soccer. This turned into the one thing that we always looked forward to and kept us going. We called our team the Firangi Devils (firangi sort of means foreign in Hindi) and I will miss playing with these guys every weekend.

Firangi Devil team photo

Scrimmage with the Indian officers.

Battle scars; I'm still rehabilitating my elbow and wrist.

And lastly, I'd like to express my thanks to my faithful staff, Mary and Pinto. They constantly made my life in India easier and I will miss their hard work and attentiveness. I hope they continue to work for the Air Force/Navy house long into the future.

Next stop, Graduation...