India, what can I say, well its unlike anything I've ever seen in my life. Arriving on Monday morning at 3am, Hyderabad airport is like stepping back in time. Immigration was slow, bag collection was messy and packed. Customs took us aside when we declared we'd three laptops between two of us. Apparently the limit is one per visitor. They were going to make us pay tax on one of them, but decided to let us off. Nice.
Outside the airport our driver picked us up, thank god, your going to get a normal taxi over here for love nor money. Crowds stood outside the, many of them local beggers, one followed Jody, stated he worked for the airport. He just wanted money, it was messy. We are being chauffeured everywhere here, for free. The company we are visiting are paying for all food, accommodation and transport.
The local money around 100R to 1.6Euro. We've no real idea of far 100R can take us. We opted to play it stay and take out 50Euro worth. Over the last two days we've been tipping our drivers anywhere between 200R and 600R. It was only from buying food out that we realised a coffee is less then 16cent and a full main course costs 1Euro. It's no wonder they love us, we're giving them a weeks wage in one tip! What can you do!
We're staying in hotel, some 45mins away from the Company Campus. The hotel is beautiful, but we've been so busy we haven't had the chance to use all of the facilities including a roof swimming pool. Temperatures reach over 100F/38C daily. Its HOT! But we're in air conditioned cars and buildings.
Work is long. Today, Tuesday, we've spent some 14 hours in the office.
The food is spicy. Monday lunch was had in hotel, due to my diet I only had boiled veg, but I'm getting more adventurous as time goes on. I'm still not eating too much, but getting enough juice and water to live! On the other hand, Jody is LOVING all the food, it really is a dream come through.
We've checking out of the hotel tomorrow as we're scheduled to move into the campus itself tomorrow evening. We'll remain there until we leave India next week. We're making great progress, but still have alot more to do. We've two other colleagues over here for the last week, they are moving on to another city tomorrow.
I'm going to head to bed here as I need to pack and check out in the morning. I'll update soon with pics and videos and some more impressions of India.
1 comment:
Go Pat & Jody! Hope you're having a great time. Pat, get in there and get a Hyderabad Biryani into you, you won't regret it! More blogs please .. when you've time :)
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