Final week in work - Bikanervala and Dilli Haat
Trip Start
Feb 16, 2007
1
8
15
Trip End
Mar 18, 2007
Gurgaon,
India
Monday, March 5, 2007
Managed
to book an overnight train to Jaisalmer, this can now be done on the
internet, this sure beats been stuck in an India rugby scrum to get you
ticket, that over here pass for a queue and came take up to 4 hours in
some cases. I booked for Thursday evening after work. For $20 I would
get an A/C sleeper with 3 tiers of bed. A total of 20 hours and 500
miles of travel.
My hotel tried to charge me for an extra
night as I'd booked through till Friday originally. I cancelled the
extra nights Monday. They must have been used to business people coming
through who rally didn't care if the extra charge went to their
company. I soon set them straight and got the charge knocked off my
bill.
I also booked a hotel in Jaisalmer, with a view of
the fort, a private bathroom all for $6. I'm sure it would be equally
as adequate as the Park Plaza's new rate of $300 per night to look out
onto building site!
The one place where the Park Plaza
really took advantage was internet access where it had you over a
barrel a bit and laundry. They charged me $75 for my last wash.
Daylight robbery, but something any company is not going to deny its
employees! As most of you know I'm not the sort of person to wear lots
of different clothes. I think for my $75 I had 10 tee-shirts, one pair
of trousers and socks and underwear.
All our taxis were
booked through the hotel travel agency. For the 5 minute ride to work
they would charge $10. The same cab on the street would not have cost
more than $2! Even for those rates I noticed the tyres on the taxis had
NO tread left at all. Not too sure what we were paying the premium for?
Maybe it was to have a driver with a peaked cap.
On
Wednesday night Irina and I took the team out to lunch at Bikanervala .
An India fast food restaurant we had visited the previous Sunday. It
was a fun place to go with food from all over India. One interesting
appetizer was a hard fried pastry ball that you would push a hole in
the top. You would then fill the ball with some other crispy pieces
followed by 2 sauces one of which was hot. You would then put this in
you mouth whole and as you crunched into it all the juice would come
out filling your mouth with flavour. Wendy in particular took great joy
in filling mine with a nice spicy mixture that would be enough to make
my eyes fill with tears. This place was a good chance for me to try
another South Indian favourite, an Uttapam. A bit like a pancake with
the same sauces as Masala Dosa. As usual I threw all my sauces on top,
but was told this was wrong and I should be dipping the Uttapam in the
sauces! Oh well it still tasted good. What I wasn't too keen on was my
desert. It turned out to be Kulfi ice cream with noodles on top! I
wasn't too sure about the noodles but I picked through and took out the
ice cream which was decent.
Wednesday afternoon we all
skipped out of work a little bit early to go shopping at a place called
Dilli Haat while it was still light and the place was open. My guide
book didn't give it great reviews, but it seemed a nice enough place
for a bit of souvenir shopping. I got some nice silk, hand-made,
patterned bed covers for $30, 2 Indian shirts, a papier mache hand
painted box and letter holder, another auction paper painting of Ganesh
and this hanging bamboo wall piece that had pictures of all the Hindu
gods.
There is a funny story about the bamboo painting.
You could flip open these windows where they would have Karma Sutra
pictures. I didn't realize this when I was buying, and once I found
this out I joked with the guy that I could not buy something with those
types of pictures, the guys face when pale when he though he'd lost the
sale and he said he had some without the Karma Sutra pictures. Well the
joke backfired as he ended up switching my Karma Sutra wall hanging to
a none Karma Sutra version. I only found this out when I got home.
I
was sad to be leaving work. It had been a great 3 weeks and I felt I
had been of some value in the knowledge I passed on. The people from my
company who I met in the hotel were all fantastic as were the India
people I was working with. The team in India also gave me a great
painting as I left. I hope I get this right but it was of Shiva and
Parvati and made partly using some sort of crushed gem stones. It was
very touching to receive such a nice present.
Moving from
such a great environment into the unknown made me a bit nervous. I knew
though once I was on the road I would be fine.
