Ketaki's Guide to moving to India

Hmm..so much has happened. We are on our way back to India for good! It was something Neeraj and I wanted to do since the day we met. We finally got around to it.

We left bay area for good on the 9th may with not a minute to spare. We were packing (mostly Neeraj ;)) for over a week. The last weekend was a crazed rush to get the apartment empty. The ambitious plan was to get it spotless...

We shipped about 150 cubic feet of stuff on Friday. We hugely underestimated the amount of work left after that. We fortunately were able to give away a lot of the stuff. However the time it takes to get the stuff out of the apartment is huge. We ran out of trash bags, plastic bags, brown paper bags, boxes to throw out stuff. We even ran out of space in the trash cans in the apartment. We even used up the two trashbins futher away. We made countless trips to the donation center for almost an hour at 3 am in the morning. Fortunately, the guy who lives below, was not at home.

The best part about doing this at this unearthly hour was that I was able to throw out stuff that I would have to clung to had I been even slightly more awake and in a slightly less in a "don't care" stage.

As luck would have it, early in the morning (or was it late in the night :)), I realized that I was not able to log into my laptop. I drove to work at 5 am in the morning and sorted that out while poor Neeraj was still throwing stuff out. Its just unbelievable how many things can find nooks and corners of the aparment. Almost seemed to defy all laws of physics :) Think about it this way, there is a huge pillow stuffed in a fairly small box. Imagine you pull it out and now try to put it back in...seems impossible..So how in the world did all this stuff fit into our one bedroom apartment?
Bad anology...but I can't think of anything better.
Ah yes, and there was stuff that should have been shipped to India, but was inadvertently left behind. We had to post it to Neeraj's sister in Boston, or leave it behind with friends ...you know who you are...we really appreciate it!! :). Fortunately, another good samaritan came with coffee, bless her...and more trash bags :)

Amongst random things we left behind, theres my car, some clothes, my hair dryer...

Finally, at 11 am in the morning, we handed over the keys and left the place that has been home for almost three years now. We will always cherish the memory of our apartment.
Now we shall live in and out of bags, hotels, homes of relatives for the next one month. We are going to the following places:
1. Chicago (done)
2. Boston (here right now)
3. UK
4. Holland
5. Switzerland
6. Italy
7. France

The next few blogs will be travel blogs. I will write them regularly..post them when I can...

adios ...