pune | getting out of town for the weekend pt. 1 – Delhi

Ok...so this post isn't actually about Pune. The third weekend I was here, I decided to get out of Pune and make a trip out to Delhi and Agra. The trip started with a flight out of Pune airport, which was quite the experience. Pune airport is a military airport that has opened itself up to limited commercial flights a few times a day. It's a tiny airport that is still very utilitarian at best, as evidenced by the fact that there are 4 shops today, and 6 gates. It was like a midwest airport, but surprisingly with a few long haul flights. Aside from going to other cities in India, they fly nonstop flights to Singapore, Dubai, and Frankfurt out of Pune.

Pune airport...there are all of 4 gates...

My flight started right after work on Saturday morning. I got to the airport, and immediately was lost. Apparently you're not allowed in the airport without a paper itinerary, which I didn't have. Jet Airways will print one out for you for Rs. 100, which is kinda dumb. Once you get inside, your itinerary gets replaced by a boarding pass anyways. The food in the airport left a lot to be desired... the samosa was microwaved and handed to me on a greasy sheet, which wasn't all that good. Of course, I didn't realize that there was actually a meal service on the flight, which is pretty good considering the whole flight was 2 hrs.

Delhi airport...pretty impressive

The minute I got off the aircraft…the humidity and heat hit me. OMG what did I get myself into?? I absolutely did not prepare myself for what was to come. By the time I got to the hotel (even with an airport transfer) I was sweating bullets. The forecast was 45C (115F) and at least 50-70% humidity…it was going to be a heated 2 days.

ISKON Temple

I had one day in Delhi, so I figured I’d make the most of it. Half an hour after checking in and a quick shower later, I was on my way to see the old city. The first stop was a temple of course (one of many). While there are quite a few, the temples here are always quite impressive in terms of design and size. The first temple was the ISKON temple…the home of the Hare Krishnas. It was quite a sight. I had to get used to taking off my shoes, which was not something I was used to (especially given that a good chunk of it was outdoors and it was freakin hot. Good thing I learned to walk fast and the bottoms of my feet weren’t really burned that badly.

Gandhi Memorial

India Gate

There was a succession of places where shoes were required to be set aside. After this was the Gandhi Memorial, which also require shoes to be taken off. After that I headed over to the government center. There was India Gate, the parliament building, and also the president’s house. None of these buildings actually gave access, so it was a lot of standing outside taking pictures.

paratha with different kinds of side-curries

parantha wada

After that I headed over to old Delhi, which is closed off to cars and auto-rickshaws. I ended up getting a bicycle rickshaw to give me a tour of the old town. I stopped by the parantha alley, where some of these parantha places have been there for over 100 years. Quite possibly the best vegetarian meal I've ever had, it featured the parantha (a sort of fried or baked pancake filled with stuff like spinach or cheese) along with a bunch of side-curries like a pumpkin or potato curry.

After that was a detour through the old Delhi spice market, where the scent of all the different kinds of spices filled the humid air. A quick glance around, and you can see why this place is iconic. There are so many different people from housewives to cooks here shopping for spices for their curries (or masalas or biryanis or other stuff).

Humayun's Tomb...the architectural inspiration for the taj mahal

My last stop of the day was Humayun's Tomb. This place was the architectural inspiration for the Taj Mahal, as Humayun was the great grandfather of Shah Jahan, the Indian Mughal Emperor that built the Taj Mahal. This place was incredible – you can see so many of the architectural features that  the Taj Mahal have, and it's cool to see in person the day before heading out to Agra to see the Taj. I was able to walk around the courtyard and see the labyrinth of waterways and fountains that wind around the gardens around the tomb. The actual mausoleum had a few people buried there, I'm assuming the family of Humayun as well. It was quite the place to visit to cap off a journey through New and Old Delhi. Tomorrow, Agra!

pune | the food

As a person who's self-professed preferred foods are "anything but indian", this trip has certainly been interesting to my palate. I've had a chance to experience the good, the bad, and the downright weird food. I can say that I have found something I almost can't live without, and I've found many things I'd be perfectly find with never tasting again. But for the most part, it's been a positive experience.

Of course, having such a weird working schedule (5pm-4am), it's been challenging finding a place where I can settle down and get some good food that doesn't involve room service. Of course, since I sleep during the day, the majority of my culinary experiences have been here at the hotel. Breakfast is usually my favorite meal of the day, and here is no exception. I enjoy a masala omelette every morning, and it is basically eggs and salsa, which is always a good combo, and that would be followed up with some fresh juice and fruit (and maybe a pastry or two). Lunch/dinner (depending on when I wake up) has generally been room service (depending on my mood, it could be anything from lamb lasagna to garlic butter naan). Then a midnight meal would be at the work cafeteria, where they have a bajillion types of curry and usually naan or rice to eat with.

And of course, the other foods at work have been quite interesting. There was the mystery food that was handed to me on greasy re-purposed printer paper. There was samosas served in newspaper from one of the street vendors outside. I distinctly recall the first day at the office, having to do the initiation of as many fried green chilis as I could handle. That was quite the experience. While I found a technique for getting them down, it was not exactly pleasant on the outbound.

On the weekends, the culinary adventure begins. I've had the benefit of being able to venture out on the weekends and sample some of the local cuisine while also being able to sight-see a bit. Some of the food I've had have been quite interesting. I'm starting to get used to the fennel-seed taste (though I still don't prefer it), but I absolutely love garlic butter naan. omg that stuff is amazing...basically thin bread with butter and a liberal dosage of garlic, which is then baked. How could I resist??

Then there was the other amazing food item...the chicken tikka pizza. omg tandoori chicken with some cheese on a thin crust...it was awesome. How do you say no to something like that?!

pune | the smells

Yes...this deserves it's own post. The smells have been...well...unique. When you put a billion people in a small area and bake them with sun and humidity...things get quite interesting. Now combine that with the smell of spices and a bunch of other things and that's what it smells like. Walking down the street, you're olfactory senses are hit with a barrage of various scents...some pleasant, but most are a mixture of some, well, unorthodox ones.

There was one place that was particularly noteworthy for it's smells (in a pleasant way): the old delhi spice market. There was such an aroma in the air from the various spices that were just out in the open. It was an amazing mixture of different kinds of pleasant smells. I could pick out certain ones that were much better than others, such as fresh vanilla or cinnamon, but over all it was definitely a treat for the nose. Of course the minute you step back out on the main road your nose is blitzed by pollution, body odor, and other worse smells; however for the moments I was in that alley, it was amazing.

Other areas I've been around India have been hit-or-miss with scents. Even at work, the smells can get interesting. I know it's air-conditioned and everything, but still...there are smells, and it took me a little while to get used to it. I just learned to ignore the smells and keep on truckin'.

All in all, India has definitely not been easy on the nose. Between the unpleasant smells and the occasional nice ones, your nose is constantly on overdrive trying to ascertain whether to stop breathing through your nose or just try to power through the scent. It was quite the olfactory adventure.

pune | the job

I’m sure I’ve mentioned during a previous post, I am actually in Pune for work. State Street is in the middle of a huge initiative to move certain processes to India, and I’ve been working on this project pretty much for the last 11 months. We’ve been working with a joint venture that SSB has with an IT company called Syntel. Anyways, as part of this project, I’ve been sent to India to train and help structure the JV’s management team so that the team here can run smoothly.

The company is located in an IT park in the north west part of the city in an area called Talawade, and there are many different companies who have a presence here. The team here is now roughly 25-30 people, and there's a mix of experienced folks as well as new hires. The team meshes pretty well, and everyone here is very friendly, although some are quieter than others.

My first day here was actually on Memorial Day. We have a few aussie and canadian funds that need to be valued, so it was a relatively light day. Within of half an hour of getting in, my JV initiation was brought in. I turned to my right and one of the coworkers was holding a mess of fried green chilies wrapped in newspaper, and it was up to me to eat as many as I could. I ended up doing 6, which was slightly more than what my coworker spencer could put down...I guess I passed.

The group here engages in some pretty fun diversions that help make the nights pass (oh yea...not sure if I mentioned, they work US hours). Friday's are usually the most fun, with inter-group games to promote some friendly competition, and after work there are some night-time cricket games. The team here is fairly similar to my group in the US in terms of their interactions with one another and how the group meshes. A lot of these guys are right out of college, so they're all in their mid-twenties.

midnight pickup game of cricket

Since I'm here on a business trip, most of my time is consumed by setting up meetings with various JV reps and etc. The work here gets busy sometimes, and since the work we moved over is completely different than the work that other groups had offshored, we have to do quite a bit of training, and that does get pretty intense. However, at the end of the day, it has still be quite a fun experience.

pune | the city

Pune is a smaller city about 3 hours away from Mumbai in the state of Maharashtra on the western side of India. Starting it's existence around 800AD, it became the seat of the Peshwas, and was known as the cultural capital of the state. It had been pretty small considering the other larger cities in India that rose to prominence; however recently there has been an IT boom in the city, and with the number of universities in town, Pune has grown to be the 9th largest city in India. It is now known as a college town and a place where people come to work.

The town is located in the mountains, so it is naturally cooler than the nearby city of Mumbai. It's is also less populated, which makes it a decently pleasant place to live compared to other Indian cities. There are parts of the city that are quite nice to live in, such as the area of Koregaon Park. Other areas don't seem to be as nice. Every day on the drive to work, we go past this patch of squatters that live in this area where people are trying to develop the land. The homes are not much more than walls made of aluminum or wood sheets covered with plastic tarps. Every once in a while the government will come by and raze the homes, and they'll re-emerge in a few days before the developers can build anything there.

Pune has quite a few temples, and the local sights are quite interesting. Right behind the hotel, there is the Chaturshringi Temple built into the hills during the 17th century. In the center of town there is also the Pataleshwar cave temple, which is a temple carved into the rock and has several shrines to random gods in the cave. This place was kinda random, since it's right in the middle of the city, and driving by, you'd never guess there were caves here.

Most of the city is dotted by IT parks. Some are located on the outskirts of the city where the IT parks are free to expand and cover the nearby areas. The place where I work, Talewade, is just one such area. Companies such as CapGemini, Fujitsu, and Syntel (where I work) are located here. Pune is now the largest location that Germany outsources to, and there are actually direct flights to Pune from Frankfurt through Lufthansa.

So there ya have it...this is the place I've spent the last few weeks in. Hopefully I'll have enough time to finish this series =)

pune | the journey

Since this is my first time visiting India (for an extended work stay), I figured I'd try to do a whole series on the adventure here. Not sure if I'll be able to catalog a lot since I'm working and sleeping most of my time here...but i'll give it a go...

The journey consists of 20 hours of flying – SF → Frankfurt → Mumbai – followed by 3.5 hours of driving to Pune (thankfully in the middle of the night...daytime driving would be 5hrs due to traffic). Due to the extensive travel involved in getting here (pretty much the other side of the world) I decided to begin my journey on Friday, arriving Sunday, giving myself a day to get acclimated before heading off to work. My itinerary received the blessing of my boss, so I set off.

I'll have to admit, the journey got off to a rocky start – at the time my itinerary was signed off on, nobody realized that my Friday travel day fell on the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend. Our team has three managers, and the other two had planned vacations for that day (one had a cruise booked, the other had a family camping trip). Since technically I was on a work travel day, it fell on me to run the group that day, which is not really a fun feat considering half the team is in Sac, the other half in Pune, and I would be working out of the United lounge in SFO.

My initial plan of getting to the airport at noon for a 1:50pm flight went out the window. The Davis airporter came at 5:30am so I could be past security and logged in by 8am. Working for 6 hours before 20+ travel hours was a little rough, especially considering that the internet at the lounge is configured for surfing the web, not really for VPN connections (which is odd considering the lounge was designed for business travelers). The positives were a view of the planes coming and going, along with a bored bartender that kept coming by to check on me.

Once boarding time came around, I had to pack-up the mobile office and head over to the gate. Since I had checked in 6 hours before my flight, the gate wasn't even assigned yet. I ended up looking it up on the massive screens before heading to my gate downstairs. Once onboard, I headed upstairs, handed the purser my luggage and settled in for the 11hrs to Frankfurt.

United has a odd seating arrangement for their 747 fleet, placing seats in forward-backward seating, which they swear allows them to fit more seats in the place, while not compromising seat pitch (I'm not really convinced). This ended up being a first for me...as I've never flown backwards before (it was an odd experience). On take-off, you're thrown forward (instead of back in your seat), and on landing all the stuff in front of you fall into your lap as the plane brakes. All in all an interesting experience.

In Frankfurt, the airport is confusing. There are sometimes signs that point in one direction, but in 50ft there would be a sign pointing in the opposing direction. Once I got situated I was able to check my email and grab some food. The one remarkable thing was that the beer-tap here is open. Anyone can just walk up and pour a pint, which is very different from the states. Of course, once it came time to board, it was sheer chaos (I'm told any flight to India was bound to be like this).

This flight was ok (about as ok as another 8hr flight can be after an 11hr one), although the lady I sat next to was just coming back from the Cannes film festival, and was a bit of a diva. She flipped out a few times at the Indian food served on-board, but as we were landing, we struck a conversation about everything from Bollywood films to Indian politics and passed time so quickly that I didn't even notice we landed until we were at the gate.

Once in the airport, it took an hour to get my luggage. I suppose the orange star alliance tag doesn't do anything in Mumbai in terms of priority offloading. It then took another 45 min to clear customs as the security here was surprisingly tight. Then I found my driver outside and headed on the 3.5hr journey to Pune. I tried to strike a conversation with the driver, but his English wasn't very good, and so I ended up napping most of the trip. We made a pit stop so he could pick up some coffee, and after a quick nap we were pulling into the hotel at an early 5am check-in time. All in all, from davis to hotel took an entire 33ish hours...not exactly the easiest trip to make.

twenty-nine.

 

This past year has been a bit of a divergence from the norm. I think it really hit me last may that I've been complacent, getting so into the daily grind of work and the routine of work five days a week, FBC meetings on mondays, prayer meeting on tuesdays, small group on wednesdays, fellowship on fridays, and church on sundays. I'm not really a big fan of the concept of complacency, but it's feel so right sometimes, especially when it feels like you blink a few times and years go by.

Well, in an attempt to change things up a bit, I took to a bit of traveling to get myself out of the slump and monotony that I feel like I've slipped into. China, Singapore, France, The Netherlands, Monaco, Italy, The Czech Republic, Austria, and so on and so forth. As I type this now, I'm sitting in a hotel lounge in India. It almost makes every country, every passport stamp, every flight go by in a bit of a blur. Some call it a life re-boot. Me? I don't know if I'd go that far...merely a detour from everyday life I'd say.

I'm not saying this is the road to happiness or whatever you wanna call it, it is just something I wanted to try out before I hit that 30 mark. There were so many "goals" and random things I thought I would aim for, most of which have fallen by the wayside. This seemed like something easily attainable by making a few well-timed decisions and heading into uncertainty with confidence.

Pursuing this goal means putting one or two others aside for the moment. I don't know if that's the best plan, so ask me again in a few years and see what I say. For now, I'd say this past year was worth every bit of trouble and inconvenience. Not entirely sure what I'll be doing in the coming year, but hopefully this detour helps me figure out what I want to do, preferably before I hit the 30 mark...well, we'll just have to see I suppose.