India

by Bobby
Long Lost Blog Contributor
(pictures will be re-uploaded in more detail later)

Having Ma & Pa in for a week was great! Running them around town via a 'joint custody' format, I think that they were able to hit all the major London and Paris sites in 1 week! Incredible for even a seasoned tour operator I must say. Congratulations to all!

I ushered both Ma & Pa to LHR early Saturday for their flight back to the states, and wouldn't you know, but my India elective class required me to fly out at the same terminal at nearly the same time. So we piled onto Heathrow Express and whizzed our way to LHR. We said our good-bye's till July and their Air Canada flight and my Gulf Air flight departed on-time (which is an extremely rare occurrence at LHR) flying in opposite directions.

I arrived the next morning in Bangalore (Bangaluru) to begin my week long elective class investigating current Outsourcing and Off-shoring practices by foreign and domestic multi-national corporations (hmm...sounds complicated). It
was an amazing experience. The course was intended to exhibit India's rapid corporate emergence against the backdrop of their cultural positioning. Overall the course accomplished this extremely well.


What was personally most apparent upon landing in India was the sheer size of its population and how visible that population is. Bangalore, a city designed for maybe 1 million people has 6 million living their now and Delhi (our second stop on the course) has 13 million. The concentration of people in these urban areas is both a blessing (huge potential consumer base and large human resource base) and a curse (extensive poverty). While India possesses the largest 'middle class' population in the world, it also has a population near to that of the US living on close to $1 a day. It was a world of contrasts.

I had a chance to get out and explore Bangalore on Day 1 with my good pal Takeshi. We walked up MG Blvd. to what could be considered the city centre and saw the sights, even taking some time to check out the local Art Museum (tickets were $.10 each, WHAT A DEAL!). The cramped urban landscape of Bangalore was completely different to the wide manicured avenues of South Delhi.




Our hotels were immaculate. Staying at the Leela Palace and Taj Residency in Bangalore and Taj Mahal Hotel in Delhi put another spin on the contrasts existing in the country. On advice from one of my classmates, I, Dr. Svenning (of course) reserved a table for 10 at the all-you-can-eat-and-drink brunch at Citrus in the Leela Palace. Probably one of the best culinary displays I have tasted, but a very sterlised perspective of Indian cuisine and culture.

Our access to companies during the week was amazing. We visited Dell, Motorola, WiPro, SAP, and Deutsche Bank among others in Bangalore and Bharti AirTel (India's version of Verizon Wireless) in Delhi. The visits typically comprised of a presentation and Q&A session with some executives on the impact of their location to the overall value chain of the company, and also included a tour of their premises. Some like SAP and WiPro, are enormous campuses which house 10,000-20,000 employees while others like Dell or Motorola were just big singular buildings. Whatever the case, these companies are driving a massive amount of infrastructure development in the country (which is what is desperately needed). I could go on here about details...but I'll spare you for now.


After finishing our tour of Bangalore we headed to scorching Delhi on Kingfisher Airlines (also the largest beer producer in India, what a combination) for a couple days. We got a chance to visit sites such as the Akshardham Temple and India Gate, shopped at Palika Bazaar (an underground mall, which was a great idea considering the temperature) and even got caught in my first sandstorm! Delhi was 109°F for both days. Baking hot.

I was very careful about what I ate and how I ate (only cooked food and lots of hand sanitizer, Keri would be proud), but in the end had no issues (just in case you are wondering about my GI status) and the food was terrific. Dining highlights were typically away from the shelter of the hotels, when small groups of us in Bangalore experienced 'real' Southern Indian cuisine on a few occasions served on banana leaves.

There is much more to tell, but I can't keep writing as I'm losing interest in my own story (something that happens quite often to me). All in all an amazing experience, which I can't wait to revisit at another point in the future.

Tata.