India Trip - Experience/Travel Log - 1

I recently took a sabbatical and went to India for over 6 weeks. It was great to have such a long time off. I came back very well refreshed. I initially landed in Delhi and after spending some time in Delhi, went down to Bangalore and then to Mysore. Mysore, I had a wedding to attend and help out with the same. After wedding visited a couple of Temples in Karnataka and then made a trip to Jaipur and Agra and after a brief stopover in London finally made it back to Austin Here are some experiences/travel logs and so on of the same. I will publish in parts, for one long list will be boring to read.

• I got to experience the true spirit of India when we traveled 7adults + 1 child in a Tata Indica. We didn't travel too long, just a few tens of KMs and I have to admit the road was pretty nice too.
• Witnessed a completely women operated petrol bunk in Mysore, everybody from manager/cashier to the person who checks air pressure in tires were women.
• Volvo buses were pretty much seen everywhere both in Bangalore and Mysore. I may be technically wrong in calling them Volvo buses because both Ashok Leyland and Tata Motors are making similar buses, but the people of Bangalore/Mysore recognize the brand name and call them “Volvo”.
• Banashankari-II stage had new and improved foot paths with some new and good looking bricks on the footpath. Needless to say pedestrians haven't recognized the improvement and hog the road.
• Traveled on NICE road in Bangalore, only half way done but very well built. I could truly witness the man power we have when it took 3 people to get us a toll ticket to travel on the NICE road.
• I remember seeing a pen store at the UK airport which sold pens that were worth few pounds to few thousands of pounds, to my surprise I saw a similar store at Delhi airport. The prices were from few thousand rupees to few tens of thousands of rupees.
• We went to Sapna bookstore in Mysore, newly opened and nice looking. Lots of things to browse around and they have organized their multimedia things to one floor and books to other floor. There are a ton of people employed to help customer in each aisle. The sad part was when each floor had no idea what the other floor carried and even with their sophisticated computers there was no link between the 2 databases.
• Delhi airport this time around looked better organized than before, people were behaving well and there were no line cutting and all such things. I almost gave them a rating of 4.5 out of 5 but decided on a 3 when at the last moment they changed the gate numbers from where we were supposed to board the flight. Come to think of it, probably it is an airline problem and not the airport.
• I witnessed some wonderful customer support by the staff at Mysore dairy, I was there to order milk for the wedding and the whole process took less than 15 minutes. The staff was very courteous and very helpful. The interesting part, even though they seemed pretty computerized they still maintain orders in both digital and paper format (not just a print copy but a ledger of orders).
• While helping out with the wedding preparations, I went to the Indian version of Farmers market. Just like in US, people from the neighboring farm lands bring their produce and put it up for sale. But unlike here, there the market happens every day and the number of people in the market is in the order of a thousand. The people who shopped varied from every day normal people to people who sell on streets to people buying for functions like weddings and such things. Come to think of it, I didn't see any fruits sold; mostly it were all veggies. The place seemed to generate business for more people than just buyers and sellers. There were those people who helped lifting the heavy merchandise that is bought; there were the specially modified 3 wheelers which we in India call “luggage auto” to transport merchandise that is bought. There were also lots of cows which were feeding either on the veggies itself or the discards. There were the "government officials" collecting fees from the vendors and some of the local goons collecting whatever suited their taste for the day.