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- 19 Jan 09 Pune, Maharashtra, Indi...
- 19 Jan 09 Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu...
- 19 Jan 09 Pune, Maharashtra, India
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Le Meridian - Note 1
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Anthony -
Tue 25 March 07.00
Clear
It's got an amazing roof terrace restaurant with pool, excellent breakfast buffet and pretty decent beef burgers in their lounge!
Scream, the nightclub at the Meridien, is definitely on of the best clubs i've been to in Pune, their music mix is great, playing everything from pop, house and Indian beats.
But CAN YOU BELIEVE IT: They actually hve a couples only dancefloow area! I kid you not, i was just happily shaking it away on the floor, and then some mean looking big dude asked me where my girlfriend was, and then 'kindly' asked me to leave because i was on the couples only dancefloor! on the what?? So i moved one meter to the side and was 'allowed' to dance there, but of course, my mood was pretty bad after that freedom-limiting incident!
Anthony -
Wed 27 February 13.00
Clear
So in pune, we'll see another india, we're told. Let's see what happens!
At the station we got what we thought were first class tickets, which turned out not to be. Lesson learned: book tickets and seats in advance next time. Nevertheless, we tried our luck and hoped for a spare seat we can upgrade to. Luck was not on our side, and the first class carriages were quickly packed.
The first class is something like a european 1970 compartment with A/C, but its blue interior nevertheless gives it a nice touch. The interconnecting compartments between carriages are squeeking and jumping leathally, but they appear to be safe enough to stay in while we're waiting for a seat to free up.
A guy in an elegant brown blazer identifies himself as the chief ticket inspector, who'd ultimately chuck us out of the train as well, if we didn't find a free seat to upgrade to. Next stop, next stop, he keeps telling us, my hopes are that he'll keep saying that till we arrive.
Atm, we're about 1/3 along the way, and nikesh has already found another admirer of his iPhone ;-) but he'll be interesting to chat to! Next to me in the corridor, there is an old couple of easily 75, an old indian couple as it comes out of a textbook. Amazingly, they are sleeping whilst standing! A skill probably acquired through long practise.
Wandering around, I found myself talking to a guy in another compartment from Nikesh, when they suddenly closed off the connection inbetween. Luckily, this created some more seating space, and now I'm happily seated with some roaches on ground level, on the squeaking and jumping connection between two compartments. Do i feel safe? Well, most likely...
Once we arrived in pune, we did see something more like the india I expected. It's a messy, crowded place full of people and rickshaws. Walking around city center on MG Road (Mahatma Ghandi), we see lots of young people and many seemingly 'modern' women! Unfortunately, Pune is one of the most plluted places i have ever been to, the traffic just spits out tons of sh*t that seems to stay around and not get cleared away...
Also, people here don't seem to stare at us as much, which is possibly due to the fact that they are all used to seeing foreigners regularly. Pune, a university city with like 40'000 foreign students, and many big multinational IT companies, also has the Osho Ashram in the Koregaon Park are, a place you'd better look up in Wikipedia, which is frequented by wealthy white people.
So we settled in at the 'National Hotel' as recommended by our Lonely Planet, a simple hotel situated in an old colonial Farmhouse Just opposite the Pune Station. This would be our home for the next ~2.5 weeks.
Anthony -
Wed 27 February 14.00
Clear
So on our first night to Pune, we met up with Raj and his friend Yash, two funny and interesting fellows, studying Computer Science at MIT - Maharashtra Institute of Technology.
MIT here is quite nice, it actually has a proper campus and looks like a decent university. They seem to have good facilities, and are much more proper than some of the other places i've seen so far, some of which look like my old school or like farmhouses on farmland.
They took us to a place in ABC Farms to have Shisha, we went there by motorbike, which looked quite nice and was very busy. I had a bit of a bad cough, possibly from the flight to India, which was freezing and uncomfortable, and maybe shouldn't have smoked and enjoyed the Shisha as i did... but you only live once, right?
We talked about all kinds of stuff guys talk about, covered a lot of Software as a Service and Web Applications, education systems, girls, etc. The usual.
Afterwards we had another milkshake at a roadside milkshare store, which was rather amazing! Simple shack, but loads of people queuing. Quality does not need air-condition or fancy interior!
Anthony -
Mon 03 March 03.00
sometimes, walking around town at night makes me think i am in some kind of very authentic zombie movie.
At night, the streets are mostly quiet, and ew people are around. The shabby and dirty parts of the streets suffer from the lack of livelihood breathed into them by the people mingling around throughout the day. At night, the places just look dead.
Combined this shabby dead look with the odd random open fire on the street to warm up a group of people, stray dogs in poor health, people sleeping on the street like corpses and the odd random street dweller with according look, and you have something that could have come straight out of the movies. Without the scary people eating monsters, of course.
It's incredibly, the difference between daytime and nighttime, and i hope to be able to get a picture of such a scene some time!
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