Business trip to India - part II

Back from our 9 day business trip to India, I am still recovering. Recovering from the jet lag, from the culture shock, from the spicy food, from the traffic madness, from the dirt and from the heat.

But it was all worth it. A worthwhile and enjoyable trip it was. I have now uploaded all my photos to Flickr and have started to upload my videos to YouTube.

I brought back a couple of DVDs, one of which (Devadasu) I am watching right now (well, sort of). This Tollywood movie is shot in part in Hyderabad which makes it fun watching. Also the singing and dancing is of course excellent and any scene with Ileana in it is simply captivating. But to be honest halfway through the movie (which is after 1.5 hours) I did start to lose interest somewhat. Hence this blog post. ;-)

So what other things did I pick up from India?

• Of course the Cricket World Cup is unmissable when you are in India. It was too bad that India was sent home while we were there. The locals were very upset. Some fans threatened the players (who needed extra protection), some simply stopped playing cricket but most left it at burning posters or (from the India Sunday Times) "hurled sandals at the posters of their heroes". In any case: Go New Zealand!!
  
• Clothes. Excellent clothes shopping where a shirt only costs you around 10 euros and pants maybe 20. On my next trip I will carry a bigger suitcase and will only take one set of clothes with me. I made my father happy with a hip Indian shirt as well that turned out to be a bit on the short side for me.
• Little statues of Ganesha and Hanuman. We brought back a little Ganesha for all our colleagues and a big one for our bosses. Prosperity and happiness for all!

On the last Saturday we visited the very impressive Paigah Tombs as well as the Salar Jung museum. My colleague did some home work and came across the 7 Wonders of Hyderabad web site which mentions 12 nominations. We did very well and saw most of these wonders during our visit, thanks to the excellent local guides that drove us around. The Paigah Tombs were quite hard to find (even for locals) and we were told they received hardly any visitors. And therefore hardly any maintenance was done either which is quite a shame. Some locals even made holes through the centuries old walls of the tombs in order to sleep there.

So in all it was a very nice little trip. I did not leave my mustache in the end (even if promised to some female colleagues) but then, the chest hair is still there. ;-)