A bazaar day

Hello again from India! Sudesh took me out on the town today and we had a good time. We first went to make my reservation for tomorrow's guided tour of Bangalore. It's an all day tour and should hit the major sites in Bangalore, so rather than seeing those, we went to Commercial and Brigade Streets to do some shopping. To get there, we went through what Sudesh said is called a "Gulley" which is basically an alley. He said these where "real Indian roads".

On the main streets, the traffic was horrendous yet again - even Sudesh said that it was strange for a Saturday. I also learned that "auto-rickshaw" is Hindi for "fume spewing suicide go kart with 3 wheels". OK, I made that up, but that is what it should mean. You can barely breathe riding behind them, and they are everywhere, passing you on both sides of the car and merging in front of you. Driving hear is like an arcade game - it really is.

Once we made it to the tour place, I bought my ticket and then we were off to do some shopping. Commercial St is like Time Square in NYC - packed with people and shops.

I bought some pants at a men's store (I could not get to the dry cleaners before I left because of the snow) and Sudesh and I then took an auto-rickshaw to a nice restaurant, Eden Park, for lunch. This was a welcome break from the noise and chaos of the shopping areas - it was very quiet and lots of trees and plants.

Lunch was a 4 course meal - french fries as an appetizer, then Chicken Manchuri (a little spicy, like buffalo wings) and Hariyali Kabob (not spicy) then a bread and sauce dish. Add in a few Kingfisher beers (a local Bangalore beer and very good) and it was a meal. Total price came out to 22.00 USD - quite a bargain.

After lunch we went to Brigade St. and walked around the shops and so forth. It was very much like commercial street. BTW, even in down town bangalore, there are still cows wandering about.

Here is a tip on shopping in India - the brand names there cost as much as they do in the US. I went to a Levi's store looking for a pair of jeans and they were $110 USD. If you are looking for bargains, stay away from the name brands.

By this time I was pretty touristed out for the day, so Sudesh kindly drove me back to the hotel where I decided to lay down for a few minutes and woke up three hours later. I am freshly showered, called home, and now blogging. And now... bed. I have to get up early to take a car into town to meet my tour tomorrow at 7:15. BTW, did I mention how much this all day tour costs? It's $7.00. Gotta love that.

Stay tuned - tomorrow I am taking my good camera (the previous photos are from my iPhone) so I hope to have some more "scenic" shots for you tomorrow.

Saturday Morning

I got up this morning around 7 AM local time, feeling well rested. Showered, dressed and started creating this blog. I am now in real time blogging, so I will try to keep up with it as I go. I also realized I have not provided any pictures of my hotel room, so here you go:

Time to go and meet Sudesh. More to follow!

First Day at the Office and Back to the Hotel

The Ascendum office is also in a gated property with security. This seems to be the norm. The building is very nice and I am greeted by Anunda (who arranged my travel) and Sudesh, the PM. I get my badge (Employee 007 - look out!) and am taken up stairs. The put in me in an empty office and I protest that a cube is fine, I am not a big wig, but they insist. I am later thankful of this as it is air conditioned in the office and rest of the office is relatively warm.

The office looks like a western office - nice cubes, conference rooms, etc. Sudesh, Rajiv, and I have a conversation outside my office and all of a sudden the whole team of 13 is standing around and we are having an impromptu meeting. We adjourn to the conference room to not disturb the others.

What can I say about the people in the office? Gracious, generous, hospitable, and polite is not enough - they are absolutely wonderful. I can't so much as say I am thirsty without several people offering to bring me a drink. They have a young man whose job is basically office concierge/server. I am told to just dial him up and ask for something (a drink from the fridge, etc.) if I am thirsty. I could not bring myself to do that, so I walked down to get a diet coke out of the fridge (plentiful here, thankfully) and he insisted upon putting it on a tray and delivering it to my office for me while I walked next to him! I hope I did not offend him. I just feel a little wierd being served upon like that. It's nice, don't get me wrong. I am concerned that they are simply expected to offer these things and I am expected to decline and by accepting their generous hospitality I am inadvertantly taking advantage. I don't want to offend either.

Sudesh and Rajiv are determined that I am going to have a good time here. Sudesh is taking me out Saturday morning and arranging a tour for me on Sunday with a western tour group that is evidently an all day thing. They are also going to take me out next weekend to Mysore, which is near here, and a national park that has wild animals (like elephants, etc.). I am very much looking forward to this and their generous hospitality is astounding.

At the office, we talk about the agenda for the coming weeks and then we go to lunch. Lunch is Domino's Pizza, a short walk down the road and around the corner. It's my first time out walking and I get a lot of people staring at me. They don't see many fat, bald, reddish haired caucasians in this area evidently. The weather is wonderful! In the 80s with no humidity and a nice breeze. Very, very nice. Later, back at the hotel, I see I am a little pink from the sun for about 20 minutes walking in semi-shade. Sunscreen is important from now on. I also pick up a six pack of diet coke in cans to take with me back to the hotel. I go into a local vendor with my guests and purchase it. There are little shops everywhere that are open fronts and I think they just roll down a metal door when they close, like a garage. Most are the size of a one car garage and packed with stuff.

I also had a chance to speak a bit to Kris Niar, the CEO of the Ascendum India. He also is a very gracious and generous person. We talked business a bit, about the project, etc. He seems to be a very saavy business person, like Mahendra, and I am looking forward to working with him. We also talked about photography and we both have digital Canon cameras. Since I brought mine with me, he as offered (and I accepted) to borrow his nice zoom lens for my weekend sight seeing.

Back at the office I am gettting a killer headache and am still pretty tired. Rajiv has to leave early, so we call it day and I take a car back to the hotel. I crash and burn for a couple of hours and then get up and work until about 10 PM writing up a new version of the FSD for Sant, sending out the database design to Sant for review. I play a little bit of Crayon Physics (very fun game - google it and get it). Then it is off to bed - Sudesh is supposed to call around 10 AM and pick me up around 10:30 to go see downtown Bangalore and do some shopping.

Jan 30 - First Day in the Office

I woke feeling relatively good at 7:30, showered (making sure not to get water in my mouth), brushed my teeth (bottled water), got dressed and went to breakfast. My car is scheduled to pick me up at 10 to take me to the office.

The grounds of the hotel are very pretty and tropical. There is a court yard with a huge tiki bar in the center (with moat no less) and a swimming pool. You pass through this court yard to get to the breakfast.

For breakfast I had an omelet to order with cheese and veggies. I figure since it is cooked, the veggies and cheese should be safe (I hope so). I also asked for a bottle of water (I had to pay 180 INR, about $3.50 so I will bring my own from now on). I also had Poori Bhajji, which is like fried bread with thick vegetable soup poured on it, and was very, very good.

The drive to the office is one I will never forget for a myriad of reasons. The traffic was horrendous. Gridlock is everywhere and motorcycles and pedestrians shoot through between cars. Cars come from all directions into the intersections at once, no one stopping. There are simply no rules of the road here except "Don't die, don't hit cows". Only when my hand was almost numb did I realize I had a death grip on the overhead handle. It literally took an effort to uncurl my fingers from it. The only thing that slows traffic are speed bumps. These are not like speed bumps in the US. Imagine a telephone pole partly buried in the road and you have a good idea of what these are like. I am told that most of these are home made by the people who live near by to keep traffic down and slow on the roads in their area. I can see that some look professional, and some look very home made, and all scrape the bottoms of the cars that go over them even at slow speeds.

The other part I will not forget was what I saw along the way - my first daylight view of India outside of the hotel. We have all seen the pictures of poverty on TV for missionaries soliciting money for Africa, etc. They are hard to look at and used to joke about Sally Strothers, at 350 lbs., talking about starving people and that she could feed a village with what she ate. There is nothing funny about poverty, period. I got to see it up close and personal and it's stunning. What we call poverty in the US is not even close to what they have here, by a long shot. I am not going to keep harping on this, but I would not be honest in this blog if I did not mention it here. I did not take pictures out of respect for the people - how crass would it be for a "rich" westerner tourist to take picture of these poor people that others might find "interesting". Enough - it's said, and it's burned in my memory, and I will not keep dwelling on it here.

Jan 30 - India First Impressions, Hotel

My first impressions of India, at the airport, was that it looked/felt like Florida in the winter time. It was relatively warm (though the locals were in coats), there was a nice breeze, palm trees swaying in the wind, flowers blooming on trees and shrubs, etc. I almost expected to smell the ocean, but the scent was more NYC than West Palm Beach.

My second impression of India was that travelling by road is a harrowing experience not for the faint of heart. Under no circumstances should a westerner attempt to drive in Bangalore. Simply put, what we consider traffic laws in the US are merely suggestions, mostly ignored, in India. Stop signs are used to indicate an intersection and are summarily ignored. Trucks don't have side mirrors, and so say "Honk Horn" on the back. Every time you pass another car, truck, motorcycle,auto-rickshaw, bicycle, person, cow, pig, or pedestrian, you honk your horn. The honk seems to signify that "I am coming so get out of the way or die". Coming to the hotel at night, it is very dark and I can't see much besides palm trees blurring by and the colorfully decorated back ends of trucks as they blur by as well.
We reach the hotel and it is gated and guarded. The driver pulls in and I tip him 200 rupees (about 4 USD). I later learn that was very excessive, 50 rupees will do if you think any tip is necessary at all - its not expected.
The hotel lobby is dark and I have the distinct impression that the manager was asleep somewhere, which is fine. I sign in and I am shown to my room on the 3rd floor.
The room is relatively nice. Certainly bigger than I had in Paris (i.e. not a closet) but not what I would call plush. It is comfortable though, the bed is good, it has A/C, TV and a fridge, and a private bath with a toilet and shower. I have a view of the city (and billboard) from my window.
I unpack and by 3:45 I am crashed out.

Jan 28 to 30 - Travel to India

You just have to love the snow. On day before my trip, we woke up to several inches of snow that continued through out the day. Schools, businesses, and (ahem) airports were closed throughout the region. The forecast, freezing rain and ice Tuesday night, with more snow on top of that Wednesday. Excellent!

My flight leaves Dayton at 2:30 PM and I awake to heavy snow and thick ice everywhere. Streets have not been touched. The night before, my mom calls and makes me promise to be at the airport 3 hours early (1.5 to 2 is sufficient for me, but I agreed to 3 so she would stop harping... sorry Mom... ;-) ) Turns out it was a good idea as you will see below (Thanks Mom).

Intending to get to the Airport by 11:30 and with the weather the way it is, I intend to leave around 9:30 AM. After chipping away a good 1/2" of ice from my car, I get in around 8:45 and get the heat going. Denise makes me breakfast and tells me I am insane to try to make to the airport in a level 3 snow emergency. She is right, of course, but I don't want to miss my flight and take the penalties and arrive on a weekend with no one around, etc. So, blithely ignore her pleas of sanity and decide to go forth into the snow.

I want to thank my next door neighbors for helping push my car up the street after leaving my drive way. I was spinning my wheels and going no where (during which time I am relatively sure my wife was looking out the window giggling) until they came to my rescue. The main roads where plowed, but slippery and I had some problems going up some hills until I got to the highway. The highways were snow covered but very light on traffice (being illegal to drive during a Level 3 Snow Emergency).

I eventually made it to the airport at about 12:30 where my flight to DC was, not unexpectedly, delayed due to bad weather in DC. The woman at the ticket counter said going through DC was not a good option and rerouted me onto a flight that left in 30 minutes to Chicago, which got me into Frankfurt an hour later but plenty of time to catch my connection to India. So, I made the flight because I was early thanks to my Mom harping about 3 hours. So, thanks again Mom.

Flight to Chicago was uneventful, as was my long but relatively comfortable flight to Frankfurt. In Frankfurt I had like 3.5 hours to kill so I wandered through their central terminal and did some Window shopping. I had my last taste of the west at McDonalds at the airport (where I also found an outlet to recharge my laptop and iPhone) and then I was off to India.

My flight to India was also relatively uneventful. I had some kids crying behind me, but the handy new in ear earphones I bought from Shure, along with the WhiteNoise app on my iPhone did the trick and I actually slept a couple hours on the plane.

The Bangalore airport is very modern and looks like any other big international airport. I cleared customs, got my bag which I was happy to see came through fine, and exited the terminal to find the car that was arranged to pick me up and take me to the hotel. Unfortunately, I could not find a placard with my name on it, so I went and exchanged my money for rupees (300 USD nets you about 13,800 INR) and went to the airport taxi place. They called the hotel who called the driver who came out of the crowd saying he was standing there with my name on the placard which he showed me. Maybe I just missed it, I don't know. I looked three times but who knows. Anyway, I was escorted to the car and at 3:00 AM local time, to the hotel we went.

Bangalore - Pre Trip

There is a lot of prep work that goes into traveling abroad, especially to non-western countries. For starters, you need not just a passport for India, but a visa as well. This is done by creating and submitting an online form through Travisa, a company that India has outsourced it's visa processing through. Yes, India outsources as well. You fedex your passport to the Indian Consulate in NY, and a few days later back it comes with a Visa sticker in it. Total cost: @ 400.00 USD for a 5 year, multiple entry visa.

You also need vaccinations - and lots of them. India is in the tropics, being on the same general latitude as the Caribbean (depending where in India you are), so you have to contend with malaria as well as a host of other things you don't think of in the west such as Hepatitis A/B, Typhoid, Yellow Fever, Encephalitis, etc. It takes two sets of shots minimum before you can go and a minimum of 14 days for your immunity to build up to the Hepatitis and if you go that early you need a follow up when you get back, and a last one a year out.

You also need some pills - anti-malaria pills you take every day while you are there (and after you get back depending on what you chose), and Cipro to kill whatever gives you "Delhi Belly" which keeps you close to a bathroom if you get my drift. Total cost on the meds and shots: @ $700.

I bought my airline tickets through MakeMyTrip.com, which specializes in India travel from the west. I ended up on a USAir / Lufthansa trip that goes Dayton to DC to Frankfurt to Bangalore. The cost was a reasonable $1080.

I also bought some OTC medications and sundries, some snack food, and pair of Columbia Titanium pants that are made for travel / adventure. The pants have zip off legs (convenient to put on at temples and shrines where long pants are required) are sun blocking, have lots of zippered pockets, light weight, etc. Total out of pocket expenses: @ $150.

I also needed to get refills on my prescription meds with a vacation override from the insurance company, so prepare for that as well before you travel.

Also, iPhone users can find a lot of interesting and free (or cheap) apps from the app store about India, such as "fxChange" which computes rupees to dollars and back, "WN Hindi" a language learning tool, and "India" an inexpensive travel guide to India for newbies like me. Also, "WhiteNoise Lite" for the hotel room and some power adapters.

Well, that is mostly it for pre-trip stuff. Many thanks also to Pat Freeman's excellent India blog, which gave me lots of tips to what to pack, etc.

Visit to Bangalore - Read Me First

For those who are keeping score at home, I am in India on business from 1/26/09 to 2/11/09. The purpose of my trip is to meet with the Indian development team, during the design phase, for the project I am working on and to make sure the designs and architecture are aligned properly with the concepts that the customer (and I) have.

I felt it appropriate to keep a blog of my trip so that you, keeping score at home, can have an up-to-date.

I am cheating a little here and retro-blogging my pre-trip and first day or so, since I did not get a chance to set up the blog before I left. I want to record my information quickly before my initial impressions are lost. So, scorekeepers, let's begin...