“India Personified”. This photograph of posters and cards for sale was taken on the streets of Mumbai at one of the thousands of street vendors. It’s a great shopping city, kind of like New York, sort of.

How does this fit in here, you might ask?

Well, on the third two-week vacation in February, we got to tag along with Paul on one of his quarterly business trips to India. He has been working in India for over ten years, and we figure he has been there at least fifty times. I had wanted to go too for a while, but the opportunity had never presented itself until we were in France. Half way there, vacation schedule coinciding with business travel and we had enough frequent flyer miles, so off we went. Paul has a business partner in India; he and Prasad are microfinance investors. Both drawn to the aspiration of possibly making a qualitative difference in the lives of families living in poverty in India and other developing countries. We got to meet the Caspian team in various locations throughout our travels and visit some microfinance institutions and communities/slums where the recipients of these micro-loans, live and work. Key to our amazing time in India was Mohini Devi. She arranged our complicated travel itinerary, combining business in Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Chennai with Elephant Safari in Nagorhole National Park, an Ayrevedic Yoga retreat and “Lost in Goa” hippie beach trip.

Ironically, we did not visit the Taj Mahal. Wonderful and amazing as our school year was, in addition to the Taj Mahal there were other places that we did not get to visit. We will just have to visit them next time we do this, “Insha’Allah”. God willing!