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 =)