Be happy, it’s not freezin in India.

Today I realized “hm, it’s pretty hot”, and I really mean “hot”. Like in the high summer season at home. The Indians say, well, yes it has become a bit warmer now… Winter seems to be over since a few days ago. But, still, we have February, the temperatures are increasing the next months until summer in June……. and THE FOLLOWING is just the forecast for the next days – Keep in mind, I am still talking about February (!):

I know, when I was posting from my exchange semester in the US, I went a little excited about the temperatures in Oklahoma. But seriously that was nothing! Sure, I came here with the expectation of bloody heat, so I am not wondering too much so far. However I begin to realize that I am mentally not prepared for what is about to come the next entire four months (I haven’t even celebrated Bergfest yet): Pure torture

Somehow German…

Here’re some nice facts and some things to smile. Let’s talk about “German” things in India. (it’s to bridge the gap until I come up with the next post of Rajasthan or even Jaipur/Agra, to which I am going by train in two hours!)

(1) Sometimes you find a “German bakery” in the streets, which offer some cake or chocolate croissants (!) – and in Jaisalmer it was actually really good, could not expect such a good piece of cake.

(2) There are these trucks, with the word “Eicher” in big letters on the back. And yes, the name comes from a German tractor company… but this was in the early days. They started in the 60′s to enter Indian market, and when the German head company went bankrupt, the independent Indian subsidiary continued to be one of, if not the biggest truck/tractor/et cetera producer in Asia now… Yes, there’s not only Tata in India – but more about “transportation” (for traveling) in some other post later. Stay tuned!

(3) You already know, that I don’t like the Indian sausages. Now I discovered this, haha:

I did not buy, because it’s all the same…

(4) One last thing, I saw in the pharmacy. I am not sure, what makes THIS product so German, but that’s how it’s called:

Gir

Yes, there’s actually a little lag on this blog at the moment, not because of nothing happening but of too much to happen so that each event delays the previous one. So let’s go back 3 weeks ago:

We went to the west of Gujarat, to the Gir National Park on Saturday (sorry, the upload of the first set of pictures of the Gir National Park was interrupted, so that’s why you can only view ‘em each by each as single photos) and the Girnar hill on Sunday, the highest mountain of Gujarat, being an important holy place for Hindus and Jains. But let’s start at the beginning, unfortunately I forgot the name of this place where we arrived:

We took a rikshaw (7 People + Driver) for a long ride (more than one hour, but with a break to drink some coconuts etc.) to the Gir National Park. Here’re some pics from the ride:

Then we entered the wildlife sanctuary with the only population of Asian lions! And we saw them, live, two times, and even closer than the tourists usually come, because after the first visit of some resting lions in a crowd of jeeps full of tourist our car broke down. So coming even closer doesn’t mean that lions came and we could not escape , but by this we got a second chance. Once all the tourists jeeps had left, we switched to another jeep and passed by some rangers to whom our guide said, that we haven’t seen any lions so far because of our broken car. Hence we then had our special highlight, lions eating a recently catched antelope – amazing! And the crazy rangers seem like not to care, they just stay out off the cars in 10 meters distance to the gorging pack of lions; Armed with wooden sticks (not looking like an effective way of defense in case a lion jumps on you)… to be honest, the small open jeep that we sat in did not gave us any safer environment, haha! (You don’t think about it that much, since you watch these beasts enjoying their dinner). By the way, we also saw jackals, crocodile, deers, and some other animals… but hey, nothing worth to mention here!

On Sunday early morning we started to climb Girnar, the biggest mountain in Gujarat, with around 10000 steps to the top with the little temple. Us lucky guys, we choosed the day all public schools in Gujarat are having a running competition to the top, so we had to take a side route. Thanks to Erhan with his Led light rack we were able to run in the morning’s darkness. Why did we start that early? Well, at Girnar often the morning fog let the top appear like flying above the clouds, together with sunrise this gives you amazing pictures…. unfortunately our Sunday was not such a day. However, climbing this is still a nice little challenge and the view ‘quite okay’, no, really nice to be honest. And, no, this is not the Chinese Wall on the following pictures, just the upper part of the stairs to the top.

By the way: The old men in the last picture are drinking sugar cane juice, which you can get quite often in India, freshly pressed out of sugar cane and arranged with lemon – Great! Even better than the coconuts. For these drinks the rule “don’t drink if the water is not clear and free of particles” does not apply

Uttrayan… and Goa

Hello again! After some time without any updates here comes some new stuff. The last weekend was my first Indian “festival” experience, the so called Uttrayan – the kite fest. The week before you can find stands everywhere beside the roads to buy small simple square unicolor kites. So from Friday to Sunday in the whole city, or entire Gujarat, or even in the rest of India you can find people playing with their kites – everywhere you go. Although I did not attend any kind of this festival before, I was told that this weekend would be kite festival, so I expected the kites. However, I did not expect music, the whole day, everywhere: Putting boxes on the rooftops and playing charts, pop music (including ‘nice’ trash music of the 90s like Aqua “Babie girl”) and latest dance club hits.

Hence the best idea on such a weekend is to get on top of one of the roofs to fly kites and watch ‘em. (Well it’s not my business, I tried, I failed, so I just took photos ) But even better is it to watch once it becomes night: The kites disappear, but instead fire balloons begin to rise to the sky – much nicer than just “boring” kites Not to forget the fireworks, which is not the certified one you get in Germany for one week in the year, no, they sometimes do not get that high as it they are supposed to rise, and if it’s a pretty old one it can happen it goes the totally opposite way – to the ground and not the sky…. (hm, I don’t find an applicable smiley to comment this) The first image is 360° image (right click thumbnail and open in new tab/window to see full size) of Baroda full of kites; and the last pic belongs to Goa:

I want to mention Goa, too, to which 4 of us Windowmaker interns went to for New Year’s Eve. Just want to say it was great, Raving party for free on the Anjuna beach, then next day sleeping on Arambol beach and after waking up having a bath in the ocean – fantastic! And the cleanest Indian beaches so far (still, dirty, but okay). We just took a lot of fun photos (jumping and wheeling on the beach, and in the night party, so no photos) – I did not took other ones, so no photos at all here :p

Thanks to Alice, here’s an impression of Arambol beach:

Company bonding

On Sunday we went with some of our Windowmaker colleagues to Zand Hanuman, a sacred place for followers of Hinduism, which is 2,5 hours away from Baroda by bus (around 60 km) – we should meet 7am sharp, with the bus leaving at sharp 7:30… guess what, we left more than one hour later . After arrival the Indians, sure, had to play Cricket first… the guys are all crazy about it. And I was by the way matchwinner, although taking part in that game for the first time. They were a bit afraid that Germany now starts beating everyone in these sports, too, haha. Then we had “breakfast” and after visiting the shrine and trekking to the top of a hill nearby we had the lunch, as tasty as always. Actually it was already late afternoon, so time to leave. To sum up, a really nice day, as we could not expect all this when they told us about a “company picnic on Sunday” at the beginning of the week
The following photos include also lots of landscape et cetera (this holy place is deep in rural area, along with cotton fields and caution signs to be aware of hyenes and leopards), since I haven’t posted a lot so far, I think:

Some funny facts:

Yesterday I got a haircut for less than 2,50 EUR – “so billig isses nicht mal bei uns im Osten”

Also bought a sleeping bag on Ebay India for 25 EUR including delivery within one day via air mail… I hope that Indian Post works with the same enthusiasm on my letters.

Mumbai – Day 2

On Sunday we planned to make a city tour, to visit all the tourist sights. Instead of taking a bus we rented a taxi to take us to a list of sights for 500 Rs (in the end we did not see all we wanted for 500, but still, it was cheap). Starting at the Gateway our first stop was Mumbai University with the Rajabai Tower of the library. Unfortunately the place is not public, so we were not allowed to enter. Next to the University is Mumbai High Court, and both are located at the Oval Maiden recreation ground, on which almost every day people are playing cricket! It’s big and full of people playing – really funny to see.

After that we continued to the city hall (Municipal Corporation Building) next to the Victoria Terminus station (Chatrapathi Shivaji Railway Terminus). The driver always wanted to take us to several shopping streets, but we only wanted to go to one at maximum. Whatever. We reached Nariman Point and finally Chowpatty Beach. “Beach” sounds good, huh? Well… let me just refer to the last picture of this post. It’s still India, I guess one of the dirtiest countries on earth.

(If you want to watch the original sized picture, right click the thumbnail and open in new tab)

Mumbai – Day 1

Last weekend was the first trip out of Gujarat, off to the megacity of Mumbai. After a shaky 6 hours ride in a sleeper class coach of Indian railway we arrived Saturday morning – perfect time to watch the sunrise at the Gateway Of India (I’ve already put a video of this in the previous post). At this spot you’ll also find the Taj Mahal Hotel, which is next to the Gate (see me in front of it in the top picture).

Mumbai is different. Baroda is developing, but much more developed than the villages of rural India. However, Mumbai at its tourist spot seems like centuries ahead compared to Baroda: Proper sidewalks, pretty clean streets and kinda “normal traffic” makes it let you feel more comfortable. Also a lot of (black) taxis, whereas Baroda knows only Rikshaws. When it comes to alcohol, yes, then you’ll be happy person (if you’re have foreign value of money) in the bars. And illegal drugs you can have as well, but hey, I am definitely not here for this (I was asked several times, during daytime, in the middle of the street and between all the people).

To be honest, almost the whole time we spend in the south-west central part of Mumbai, which is actually a pretty nice looking city in old English or Imperial architecture (I don’t have a clue what it really is), with most of the tourists sights. The first day we also spend time on the only island in the middle of the “Mum-bay”, haha, joke, (Mumbay is located at a bay). It takes more than one hour for the boat ride one-way, and our idea was to have an amazing look on entire Mumbai from this point. Unfortunately does Mumbai also have the India dust around it. I don’t know whether this all comes from the smog and dirt, I think so, but more interesting to me is the question if there’s is a time during the day, when you don’t have this. I guess this is never the case…

 

To be continued in the next post “Mumbai – Day 2“…

India – waking up (HD)

The Gateway of India, Mumbai

First Attempt

… of bringing the taste of Germany to India:

Fried potatos, potato salad and sausages. It was kinda German dish, but could not get the potatos to become brown, the sausages (which was the only package of pork sausages between hundreds of various chicken meat products – although they told me that they don’t have any pork sausages) really tastes like “strong” pork. It’s totally different to sausages in Germany. For the potato salad I used Dr Oetker (there’re few Dr Oetker products around here but all made in India so they taste different as well) Mayonaise; You can’t taste it pure, it’s a horrible taste, but if you mix it then it’s okay. You can eat, if you haven’t eaten for a long time.

Next attempt will be Glühwein (hot wine punch), once I find some “proper” wine – means, at least any wine I hope this is easier to make and will taste better and more like the Glühwein I know from Germany. I mean, spices shouldn’t be the problem over here, however I haven’t seen cloves, cinnemon and anise yet. But really, they put cloves and cinnemon into chicken biryani (chicken with rice), so it must be somewhere here…

Whoa, so much lines about some simple German dish. I should rather mention that I also went to an Indian wedding on Sunday, which is really nice: Of course, the outfits of the couple are traditional as well as the ceremony, which takes some time/hours. So I saw a lot of people in traditional outfits, who really supported my choice for the title of this blog (COLORFUL diversity), because you usually don’t see this every day but the dust and smog, which makes everything yellow-grey. Basically do the outfits or how the wedding is held depend on every single wedding, how much modern or traditional influence there is and also local/regional traditions. Anyway, before each ceremony there’s a big lunch, so now I am back to topic again, the food. It was great Indian dish, as always!

Update: Wine and spices have been bought (Cloves, anise and cinnemon). Now I still need to buy oranges, but want to wait until Christmas. (Maybe I can find some “extra taste” in terms of rum or Amaretto in Maharastra next weekend) Shall be the only Glühwein this christmas, because about 1000 Rupees for the cheapest bottle of wine (Indian wine) in Baroda is a bit too much. Welcome to Gujarat, the state of prohibition. (Compared to what I get paid for my first month: I can buy 8 bottles of this wine and I am out of money!)

Laxmi Vilas Palace

Today we went to Laxmi Palace, a pretty big one. The palace itself is a nice sight, but the fact that you must follow a certain way and that you’re not allowed to take pictures inside or from far away, makes the experience less nice… Anyway, here are some pics:

And at the end we met Jignesh, a fellow from Windowmaker, who gave me a training session this friday on how to do translation of the software into German