Friday, May 04, 2007

Travel Travel...till you Unravel !!!


I have never travelled so extensively in my life thus far, I have never seen so much of india thus far, and yet Iam very excited about yet another short trip tommorow (for entirely other reasons :-))

Last saturday, I started from bangalore to chandigarh and then onto Nalagarh in Himachal pradesh.I had been there for the opening ceremony of our new plant there.The highlight of the place was this amazing Hotel that we stayed in. Its called the Nalagarh fort, which used to be the Maharaja`s house. Supposedly he had 365 rooms for each one of his wives...ideal for a hotel huh!! The view and the amazing regal Bar just added to the fun, but the place was a little disconcerting...I mean there were bats flying around and the bathroom was filled with furniture...how wierd is that!....

Then came delhi....now this is one city which is really starting to scale up to international standards in its infrastructure....the metro was just amazing! Then we visited Karol bagh for some dinner and shopping...the hustle and bustle was simply amazing.

Next day, we moved onto UP....Ghaziabad. It was largely uneventful and we returned to delhi the very same evening. The next day, we started our pilgrimage to the holy city of Varanasi. Now this is when it struck me as to how backward india still actually is!! After dusting off some work, we visited the Kashi Viswanath temple on the banks of the Ganges....it was a nice experience and very different from south indian temples. The again tried to shop , but failed miserably....Im just sooo impatient!

Next day, we visited markets like Mirzapur and then to Allahabad....my impressions were further worsened. Supposedly, all that we see in the movies is very true in eastern UP. Allahabad was tense with the oncoming elections and there gunmen all over the place....

Finally, some solace when we finally came to Lucknow...now this place seems to be developing rapidly and did wipe off some of the nasty memories. Hey, on the way there, we were encountered with a freak storm called Aandhi. It was a wierd sandstorm after which it rained.
Finally we ended out trip in the gandhi stronghold of Rae bareilly.

Whew..that was a tough trip especially in the heat! But great experience though....

Thought of the hour: Customers behave remarkably similarly across markets, corporates are the one who are different across markets

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