On Sunday afternoon, we rejoined our driver and jumped  back in the car for the nearly nine hour drive from Pondicherry to the Bangalore International Airport. Although it’s a long time to sit in the car, we saw some really interesting landscapes, temples, and caught rarely seen glimpses into the daily life of smaller villages. Below is the link with pictures.

Pondicherry to Bangalore Details

This post is a little out of order, but this is the information from the Bangalore Business Meeting. We had such a short stint in Bangalore that we were unable to update this while we were there. This is actually from June 27.

Business Meeting in Bangalore

Pondicherry is a small, coastal town that was a French colony. Life of Pi place there, which is taught in MacGregor’s English classes. At times in Pondicherry we forgot we were in India, but then we turned a corner. It was a very unique and interesting town. Although it took us almost 7 hours to get there, and 9 hours to get back, it was worth it!

Pondicherry

Since the last post, we have been to Bangalore, had another business meeting, and then moved on to Pondicherry!  We will have to update you on that later because we are in the world’s slowest Internet cafe!!!

But we had to give you this one update…Elephant Sighting

While in Mumbai we met with Ankur from eClerx. He was extremely knowledgable about the outsourcing industry, Indian and American cultures, and education systems. It was fascinating learning about these topics and his organization. The attached pdf is mainly about business and education centered,  but there is also some cultural information as well.

Business Meeting with eClerx

Friday night (India time) - Hotel Magrath in Bangalore

Number is 9108025551555. That includes the country code and the city code.

Saturday night (India time) – Hotel Corbelli in Pondicherry

Number is 914132225301 or 914132225302.

Sunday night we are sleeping at the airport…well not sleeping, but our flight leaves at 1:30am!

Then, for the rest of the trip we are in the Maldives

(www.kuramathi.com/village/index.html)

Number is 9606660527 – this doen’t have the country code – you would need to look that up.

Sunday night (7/6/08) (India time) – Hotel Macgrath again (in Bangalore)

Number is 9108025551555 That includes the country code and the city code.

Before and after our business meeting we hit the streets wandering around Mumbai. We visited a large market, a university, and other areas of cultural importance.

Out and about in Mumbai

Mumbai is a completely different city than Delhi. It was a welcomed relief. The illnesses we developed the day after arriving, on the other hand, were not welcomed.

Sick in Mumbai

During our last night in Delhi, we had a little flight cancellation scare. We also experienced our favorite airline, Kingfisher.

Click on link below:

Delhi to Mumbai

Our first day trip was to see the Taj Mahal in Agra. The journey was as interesting as the destination. We are having trouble with internet and updating the site. Therefore, the rest of our posts will be an attached pdf file. Just click on the blue links and you will be able to download the files.

Click on link below:

Delhi to Agra and Back Park 2

Wow. Today was quite a day. We got up at 4:30am to catch a taxi to the train station so we could catch the 6:15am train to Agra (home of the Taj Mahal). When we got there, we stood in the wrong line for a while and dealt with keeping others from cutting in front of us, which is a big problem here. After waiting for a while, the person working the window just left. We made friends with the guy in front of us (college student majoring in Engineering) and he suggested we go to another line. After we waited in that line for a while, we were told the train was full for the next couple of days. We decided to get a taxi to take us. The 2.5 hour train ride, turned into a 5 hour car ride each way!

There is one road that is used by everyone between towns.  So, we took the one road along with the buses, trucks, tractors, autorickshaws, bikes, walkers, camels, donkeys, cows, monkeys, and whatever else found its way onto the road.

 Okay – we will have to finish this later. Our internet is not the greatest and it won’t let us upload anymore pictures on here. You can look foward to pictures of donkeys and camels on the road as well as pictures of the Taj Mahal! This story is to be continued.

We enjoyed our surprise day in Chicago. We want to thank the Lyday family for hosting us last minute.

After a nice breakfast with the Lydays, we ventured out into the city to explore. Our first stop – another breakfast. We ate at Rob’s all-time favorite breakfast restaurant, Toast, which is decorated with antique toasters.

We navigated the public transportation around Chicago and saw Navy Pier, where nobody could tell us anything about outsourcing in India. But we did get to ride a giant ferris wheel.

Then we made our way to the airport and boarded our plane for the fourteen hour flight to India. We had lost our original seat assignments with the delay, but we ended up on exit seats, which meant we had lots of leg room. Lauren got to make a new friend, an elderly Indian woman who ordered Lauren to perform a variety of tasks, ranging from finding movies on the video monitor to opening bags of chips. We all managed to get some sleep and finally landed in India at 8 pm.

The airport was a little nerve-wracking, as we were not met by our pick-up from the hotel and our luggage took a long time to appear. We booked a taxi, and I wish we could say we strapped in for the drive to the hotel, but the seat belts were non-existant, kind of like traffic lanes and driving fifty feet without honking a horn.

During the drive, we saw many, many Indians who were obviously poverty-stricken, and they were sleeping in the streets. It was very sad, but everyone warned us this would be the case. After an intense drive, we arrived at Hotel Tara Palace, which was down a short but terrifying alley. The hotel is nice, and you get used to the flies pretty quickly.

Now we have three and a half hours to sleep before we take our day-trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Being as our stay in Delhi is so radically shortened by the flight delay, we only have one day to be here, and both mornings begin before five. We will have to catch up on sleep in the Maldives.

Just kidding! Our trip has had an interesting start. When we arrived to our gate in Houston, we found out that Chicago was having weather issues (it was partly sunny with 4 MPH winds), so our flight was delayed leaving Houston, which means we got to Chicago too late to catch our flight. There isn’t another flight until tomorrow night at the same time.

The bad news is we are missing out on a day in Delhi; the good news is that Lauren and Noelle have never been to Chicago and now we will be there for 23 hours! Luckily Lauren’s cousin lives in Chicago, so we have a great place to stay! We saw cool toilets and had some pizza and Orange Crush.

Tomorrow we will explore Chicago for a bit before we head to Delhi.