Shifting

That’s what Indians say when they move homes. Shifting. And that’s what we did yesterday. We shifted from our temporary apartment in Vasant Vihar to our permanent (for two years, anyhow) townhouse on the Embassy Enclave (aka the Compound).

I know you guys are curious, so here are pictures of our new digs. Please excuse the shoddy photos and note that they were taken as we were moving in, so none of that stuff is ours. We have yet to get our stuff (household effects or HHE).

Starting on the first floor we have the kitchen. The cabinets are not new but the countertops are granite and that’s nice. There’s a window by the sink and I for some reason love that. Makes doing dishes almost fun. There’s also a freezer, which we are excited about. We look forward to freezing some mangos and other seasonal fruit, so we can use them when not in season (not a lot of frozen fruit in the stores here). It’s not an enormous kitchen but it’s twice the size of the one we had in our temporary place and has much more natural light than the windowless one we had in Falls Church, so we like it.

The living room is actually a living-dining combo, like in the temporary apartment but more spacious. Although the same couches and the same coffee table, which we may end up owning but that’s a topic for another post. Since we don’t yet have our HHE, we also get a small TV from the Embassy (not pictured here because they hadn’t “shifted” it yet). I think I am going to return the two armchairs and the little round table because they are very easily tippable by someone cute and naughty, who climbs everywhere these days. I’ll see if I can replace them with something more stable.

The dining room has a large dining table (with an extra leaf) and a matching hutch/china cabinet. I am not much of a hutch person as I don’t have fancy china to display in it, so I may send that back too rather than keep it empty.

The laundry/half bath is a little strange. It’s directly to the right as you enter the home and feels like a mud room except it’s not really because it houses the only bathroom on the first floor (behind the door). So, if you have dinner guests, you either have them use that bathroom in the laundry room (not ideal) or go upstairs (also not great) but it’s not the end of the world.

Upstairs there are three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a den. The master bedroom has a private bath.

The two other bedrooms and the den (below) share another bath.

There are no closets per se but the bedrooms and the den have built in wardrobes. There’s also a little storage area under the staircase and a bigger, though not air-conditioned one outside. 

There’s also a small garden with a picnic table and some banana and papayas plants. This morning I asked our gardener if we can start a small vegetable garden. He said for 50 rupees (about $1) he’d get some seeds and get some things (that should be planted around this time) planted. If all works according to plan, we can eat our own veggies too. How cool would that be?!

So there you have it, a tour of our new home. It’s nice to be someplace where we are going to stay for a while, although, as soon as I am done unpacking our stuff (suitcases and UAB) I have to pack again as the kids and I are leaving for Bulgaria to visit my family exactly a week from today. But that’s OK – we look forward to it and it will be a good way to escape the crazy heat here (today the temperature was 108 F /42 C). By the time we come back, it should be monsoon season, which we are told is somewhat cooler but very humid.