My travels in India

My travels in India
Originally uploaded by Zhenia.

Travel is one of my most proud achievements when it comes to my traineeship. So I'm uploading the map where I marked all of the places in India that I've been to. (I did cut off Kashmir and North-Eastern states because I haven't been there and because I was trying to zoom in on the rest of the country... no political statement intended! :)

There were 6 weeks in March-April 2006 dedicated entirely to backpacking (through the great Indian North). The rest of the travel was done on weekends, public holidays and days off (for which I'm very grateful to all of my reporting managers :).

So here's a brief and incomplete list of where I've been and what I've seen:

Mountains and hill stations. Buddhist monasteries. The biggest mosque in Asia. Ancient Hindu temples. Modern Hindu temples. Birla temples. Jain temples. Catholic churches in Kerala and Protestant churches in Kolkata. Holy cities (Varanasi and Amritsar). Big cities. Ramoji Film City. Rajasthani forts and palaces. Big bazaars. The Big Bazaar (the supermarket). Tea plantations. Coffee plantations. Strawberry plantations. Waterfalls and backwaters. Beaches. Coracles (little round boats). Submarine (made in USSR). Auto- and cycle-rickshaws. Many trains (sleeper class). Border police office in Mumbai airport where I was told I won't be allowed to leave the country...

... and the only thing that remains to be added is that the length of this brief and incomplete list is really a testament to the big heritage and to the diversity of the country. And to the professionalism of the Indian police - beware! :)

I'm back!!

Hmm, it feels a little funny to be writing this, after more than a year of silence. Especially considering the last comment in my previous post!! I can't entirely blame it on the lack of Internet access so I'll blame it on the lack of time. Or let me put it this way: the time I didn't use for blogging was spent enjoying what India had to offer :)

That said, now that I'm back home (I returned 2 months ago), I sometimes get this tinge of regret about not giving enough effort to my blog. And when I go back to my memories and pictures and books, I still feel like I have lots to say about my year (well, a little more than that) in India. So since I now have unlimited internet access and a lot of time on my hands, I think I'll be adding some new posts - still about India - soon.

No more promises though, hehe.

My June and July in India - Part I

Oh, it's been a while! Asha, believe it or not, your message was an important catalyst for this post, thank you! Since I have a lot to say about the past 2 months, I thought I'd divide this update into several parts. Here is part one...

* Monsoon season: To follow up on my last post about Indian weather, the monsoon season arrived in late June and is still here. And as it happens, some of us are complaining again, this time about the rain :) The monsoon season in Hyderabad is nothing as intense as that in Mumbai (which, as you might have heard on the news, experienced massive floods due to rains earlier this week). Here, it’s usually a bit of a drizzle during the day and some rain in the evening or at night. However, there were several occasions when it POURED in Hyderabad, too. When that happens, streets get flooded (up to 30 cm or so of water) because of the inadequate drainage system, people spend hours in huge traffic jams and if it's windy, we arrive home completely soaked, since auto rickshaws that we use to move around the city don't have side walls in their vehicles.

* New job: Some of you know that I spent my first 2 months with Satyam (after 2 weeks of induction) with Enterprise Applications group, where I was being trained on Oracle apps in order to become a functional consultant (someone who works with clients to map their business processes and requirements and then uses that information to customize the ERP package that the client wants to implement). However, I was never entirely happy there because I wanted to be in a role related to sales and marketing. So in mid-June, I was finally given an opportunity to move to a role that was a better fit for me. I am now in the Vertical Business Unit Retail, a team that manages business development and delivery activities for clients in Retail and Consumer Goods industries. Among other things, I get to learn more about the Retail industry (oh, all that behind-the-scenes work that us shoppers take for granted!) and the sales process in the IT industry. Things are still a little slow but I'm happy to be in the area that I was aiming for in the first place.

* Familiar faces: My friends from Toronto, Tien and George, visited me for 3 days in June. The duo spent 3 months traveling in India (2 months in the North and 1 in the South) and was on their way home. They seemed pretty tired of traveling. In fact, they said that after a certain point you start feeling kind of 'self-indulgent' and want to get back to life with work and responsibilities. It was great to catch up with them and to hear about their experiences in India as our impressions of the country seemed to be very different (a perspective of backpackers versus that of a person who has settled down). Something that I'll be taking into account when planning my post-traineeship travel: they found the south of India is much more orderly, clean, women- and tourist-friendly and pleasant than the North. (Not to mention that they thought that Hyderabad looked like a North American city – now that’s a bit of a stretch, if you ask me!).

Okay, more to follow… I promise!

It's Getting Hot in Here!!!

The time has come to address the topic that is close to the heart of every Canadian. The weather, of course.

First of all, before I opened my India travel guide a few months ago, the idea that winter/spring/summer/fall are not "universal seasons" never crossed my mind. Sure, I knew that +15C could be summer in some places and winter in others and that winter could mean drought, rain, or snow depending on where you are... but somehow I always assumed that everyone out there knows what exactly spring is and which season it follows. So I was quite surprised when a friend from tropical country asked me about the names of all seasons and about which one of them comes after winter. One of those eye-opening experiences...

So India has 3 major seasons: winter, summer, and monsoon. Winter (November to February) is considered to be the most pleasant time of the year in most parts of the country (a.k.a. the best time to visit India), with temperature going to as low as 15-20C, while Indian summers (April to June) are generally very hot (up to 45C). Monsoons that follow cool things down and provide some relief to all living things that are about to evaporate.

My stay so far covered the end of the Hyderabadi winter and two thirds of the Indian summer, and here’s my subjective assessment of the local weather. If I had to choose one word to describe it, that word would be – you guessed it! - HOT. One word, however, would not do justice to the variety of feelings and emotions that different types of hot weather can evoke... So here’s a more detailed description.

* Mild hot (28-33 C): Combined with a cool breeze, makes for the most comfortable living environment for a human being (in my opinion, of course), as strikes the perfect balance between need for clothing (minimal) and sweating (also minimal) :) Can sleep at night.

* Medium hot (34-39 C): Can’t sleep without keeping the fan on at night (that is, if you don't have AC/water cooler). You discover that you can in fact drink 3 litres of water and not need to go to the bathroom at all, as that you drink will immediately come out through your skin (it's amazing, I’m telling you!). The above is known as "the more you drink, the more you sweat" principle.

* REALLY hot (40+ C). Everyone adopts the very Canadian habit of religiously checking the weather forecast and starting any conversation with a discussion of the weather outside. Heat rash. Sweat stains. Feeling dehydrated in the morning. Breaking a sweat within 1 minute of taking a shower. Yiiikes. Have in mind that this description is coming from someone who spends a good chunk of the day in an AC'd office… I wonder what people who work outside would have to say about it.

Patiently awaiting the monsoon season,

Zhenia


P.S. By the way, it’s salwar kameez, not salwar kamiz (see the heading below). My mistake.
P.P.S. Mumbai IS the largest city in India. My mistake again, thanks Anoop.

I'm back! Bombay, Salwar Kamiz, Yoga and Other

So I have been bad at updating my blog… aiiii. Hey Candice, I think you were the one who promised to send me angry messages when that would happen. But I promise I’ll make up for the entries I missed over the next few weeks although it’s not very easy since I don’t have own computer and Internet connection at home. Anyway, on a different note, thanks to everyone who has been leaving comments: it’s great to hear back from people, even those who I don’t know!

Anyway, here’s a quick run through what happened to me over the past month or so..

A group of us went on a 4-day trip to Bombay a.k.a. Mumbai. Bombay as such definitely deserves a separate blog entry but we only had 4 days in the city and as a large group spent a lot of time waiting for each other so we only experienced a tiny part of Bombay life. So for now, here are my initial observations (I will definitely be going back)….
First of all, the city is huge and growing, both in terms of population (12 million people, second the largest city in India after Delhi) and geographic spread. People in Bombay spend a lot of time commuting and going places. For example, a friend of mine over there takes 2 buses and a train – an hour on the road all in all – in order to get to work every day. There is an extensive network of local trains that locals use, and we rode those trains a couple of times as well. My stay in Bombay made me appreciate the convenience of living in a smaller city like Hyderabad where places are a lot easier and faster to get to.
Commuting aside, Bombay is considered to be the most exciting Indian city to live in. There’s a lot more variety (and quantity and quality) in terms of night life and entertainment, shopping, restaurants etc. And then there is Bollywood and movie stars. All trainees from Hyderabad, where most clubs close by 12:30 AM and where Chinese is the only well-established non-Indian cuisine, were very impressed. Bombay, of course, is also an economic and financial centre, and a lot of Big Companies have their Indian headquarters in Bombay.
Finally, weather-wise, Bombay is a little “cooler” than Hyderabad (if the word “cool” can be used to describe weather in any Indian city during the summer) and a lot more humid, which most locals complain about but I liked. And there is a nice nice breeze coming from the ocean…. ahhhh!!!

This month, I bought my first salwar kamiz (a.k.a. Punjabi suit). This is an outfit for women that consists of tight or loose pants, a long loose shirt/kurta (length varies, but sometimes it goes all the way to the knees), and a scarf (to cover the chest). This whole set ensures complete body coverage and seems to be the most popular office wear for women in India. I’ll try to post a picture sometime soon.

We (Satyam trainees staying together in 3 flats, see my earlier entry) started taking yoga classes. We found a yoga instructor that comes to our place, and we have 1-hour long classes on the roof of our building every morning before work. Many of us find it hard to get up early so the attendance has been steadily decreasing… but most feel more energized after classes, even if we have to get up an hour earlier. Sometimes our yoga instructor is pretty funny e.g. “just bend your leg and touch your ear with your foot, it’s easy!”… So we giggle a lot. Yeah, we clearly have a long way to go.

While in Bombay, I got a new haircut.

And lastly, I have had more issues with ICICI bank (although I’ve finally met some helpful some staff as well) and have experienced bad bad service in department stores. More on that later…

Trip to Hampi

Hampi sunset
Originally uploaded by Zhenia.

Here is the essense of how my travel guide book describes most large Indian cities: "A noisy, congested metropolitan that is a convenient stopover point one the way to better places...". Not a very nice description... but after a trip to Hampi I understand their point of view a little better. Check out the picture -after all, our opinion of places depends on other places we have seen!

Hampi was a capital of an ancient Hindu kingdom in southern India. Right now it is a village with castle ruins and many many temples, set in the middle of a beautiful landscape... mountains of boulders and banana plantations. That was my best weekend in India so far!

IC... what?

A few months ago I saw this ad banner about ICICI bank on a banner in my Yahoo! mailbox. "This must be a joke", I thought, "Surely a bank cannot have a name like that".

However, I started to prepare for my traineeship I found out that ICICI is one of the biggest banks in India and that in fact, it manages payroll for all domestic employees of Satyam, my traineeship company. "Cool", I thought, "I'll have an ICICI account, sounds kinda funky".

So during the 3rd week of February, all of the interns from my batch had their ICICI bank accounts set up and started to patiently wait for their February salary. 3 weeks passed - no salary. Half of us ran out of money and started borrowing from the other half. We also tried to investigate the problem. Satyam confirmed that the money has been transferred to the bank.

That's when the action started. #1 - Excuses from bank guys: Apparently, there was a problem with our accounts. Apparently, the bank was missing some letters from the company, photocopies of our passports etc. Apparently, there was something wrong with our visas. #2 - Promises by bank guys: "You'll have money by 3:30 PM tomorrow." "You'll have money in 30 minutes." "You'll for sure have money in 5-10 mins!"

This has been going on for 2 weeks. Most of us trainees are now broke and calling home to get $ from our parents (I'm ok). The ICICI dudes had 40 days to notice and sort out any issues with our documents (although one would think they could let us know about any problems when they opened our accounts in the first place) but they didn't budge until we started calling them 10 times a day (that's because they would not pick up the phone) and went to complain to the boss of their boss.

Apparently, ICICI is a joke after all. Hahaha. And a very lame joke, too.