Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Last day in India

I'm on my third and final day in Bangalore, early tomorrow morning I'll head off to the airport for the very long journey home, again via London. And I intend to sleep all weekend.

It's been an interesting trip. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get much sense of the country. The company that brought us here has had us scheduled pretty tightly with briefings and meetings at their campus, so there hasn't really been any chance to explore the city. Indeed, since we're staying on the outskirts, I haven't really even been into the city.

We had planned to go out for dinner last night, but traffic intervened. We loaded onto a charter bus and began to head into town, but with the usually bad Bangalorian traffic at a virtual standstill because of a pounding rain, it wouldn't have taken us nearly two hours to get there. Back to the hotel on the outskirts instead for a buffet. It was too bad, but we were all a pretty tired lot at that point.

There's a lot of talk here about the Indian growth story, and that's certainly in evidence. Campuses and buildings for technology companies like Intel, Cisco, AOL and Accenture dot the ring roads. The infrastructure hasn't kept pace with that growth, as the traffic situation shows. The wealth is also taking time to trickle down, they say the middle class is emerging but the gap between the poor and the prosperous is still plain to see.

Lastly, I've been here for three days and I still haven't had one dish of curry, that just seems crazy. The Naan bread has been very tasty however. I've also only seen two cows wandering around, I've had my camera ready but I haven't been able to get a picture of a cow in traffic yet. Hopefully this afternoon.

And first order of business for my layover in London? Get a hamburger. I have a craving all of a sudden...

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