Hiking in India....awesome

I’ll start this one off with an adventure I had yesterday night. Safe to say, this was probably one of the most exciting/crazy/awesome/excruciatingly tiring things I’ve done in my life. There’s a good amount of pretext before the good part so bear with me!

Last Saturday afternoon, while sitting on my couch happily eating a subway sandwich (as usual) after I had just come back from a run, I get a phone call from a nice lady who is good friends with some family friends of mine back home and also a professor at IIM-Bangalore. I knew that the family friends would be coming to Bangalore sometime this month, so when the professor mentioned that they were all meeting up for dinner at a nice restaurant, I had a serious dilemma because I already had HUGE plans. I was really looking forward to going to my office to work on this exciting valuation model all night for an upcoming presentation. Then at 8, I was gonna go to McDonalds (McDonalls) treat myself to a McAloo burger and ThumsUp. Man, I had it all planned out. (Punches Self)

Haha, just kidding. We planned to meet up at 7:30, and the restaurant was actually located EXACTLY at the place all the way on the other side of the city that I had walked home from before. (Read blog post #3 for clarification, haha). This time, I auto rickshawed that ish. I get to the ‘restaurant’, which happens to be a nice sports lounge/bar, and meet up with my aunt, uncle, and their son.

Before I go on, I gotta explain that they’re not actually my aunt/uncle; rather, it’s common in Indian culture to call close family friends aunt/uncle.
In addition to my aunt, uncle and their son, there’s also the IIM prof, her daughter (who works at ESPN), and some other family friends of my aunt/uncle and their daughter (who works at Google).

So anyways, we all exchange the usual formalities, and introduce ourselves to everyone else. Everyone at the table above 25 (that is, everyone but me, my aunt/uncle’s son, the ESPN girl, and the Google girl), are having just a great time reminiscing about olden days, while we’re having a fun conversation ourselves. The topic gets to what a foreigner like me does in a new city. Luckily, I have an answer beyond eating Subway and watching TV. I’ve planned a hiking trip with a travel agent suggested by a partner at my firm, and the mountain’s about 5 hours outside of Bangalore, and I can’t wait to go next week. The travel agent had asked me how experienced I was at hiking, so he could pick an appropriately difficult trek. I told him I was very experienced….I’ve never hiked before.

Haha, no, seriously, I’ve always had this fascination with hiking. Quite honestly, I want to get out the city, go somewhere completely random, burn my legs going up a ridiculous mountain, get to the top and just sit there. The last time I came to India, we went on a fair number of trains, and I always used to wonder what it would’ve been like to climb the mountains that you see miles away in the distance. They’re not huge mountains – nothing like the Rockies…or even the Berkshires, and because of that, they look pretty climbable. Like, seriously, how hard could it be to climb one of these mountains? Just start at the bottom, and keep going…right? (WOW, did I find out how wrong I was.)

So I finish this ridiculous mountain diatribe and ESPN girl, my aunt/uncle’s son, and Google girl are sitting dumbfounded.

I tried to explain to my logic just a bit further. So, it gets boring in the city…fast. Seriously, malls/clubs/shops become eye-sores within a week. I’ve pretty much walked around a lot of Bangalore by now and I know this place like Maahi Ve the day before Phillyfest (obnoxious Dmak reference, haha). But, more than anything, I wish I had a motorbike, so I could just go somewhere randomly. You can only go so far by walking or jogging. And apparently, you can’t just rent a motorbike in Bangalore. So finally, I booked this trip to this ridiculous mountain. It’s a two day trip, and I won’t miss work. It might rain, supposedly, which is the only negative, but now or never (seriously).

The three people sort of got what I was saying now. Then, something pretty funny happened. Google girl (her name’s Aakanksha – haha, I should really name her now) tells me that her and her friends are going on a midnight trek on a mountain 70 km outside the city THAT NIGHT and that I’d be more than welcome to come.

Could this really be happening? Um, yes, please. So, after dinner, I said bye to my aunt/uncle and their son, and myself, Aakanksha, her Mom and her Dad went to her house on the northern fringe of Bangalore, where her friends would be coming in two cars to go to this place. We get to her house, and within about an hour her friends arrive, and we meet them outside her apartment complex.

Absolutely amazing people! There were eight of us total – me, Aakanksha, Shashi, Madhu, Bharat, Kunal, Maria, and damn, I forgot the name of the last person. I’m sorry if you’re reading this!!!

Its now 2 AM, and Bharat, me, Aakanksha and Maria are in one car and the other four people are in the other car. The night’s really cool, and I open my window as we pull on to the equivalent of a freeway and start driving north. Slowly, we start peeling away from the city, buildings disappear, and on both sides the Indian plains stretch empty for miles. It was really peaceful, and refreshing when Bharat, who was sitting in the front, started blasting techno. Awkward. Haha, we chatted it up, talked about a whole bunch of things, and I asked where these guys had found out about this mountain. Apparently, as Aakanksha told me, from a blog post….awesome.

About an hour later, we get to this tinny village in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and take a left onto the village ‘main road’. The streets are completely empty, but oddly enough (as you’ll see all over India), there’s huge posters for Reliance, Airtel, Kannada movies, blah blah blah, STILL!

It’s quite as anything (well, apart from us, and our techno), and we continue driving down the street, and absolutely everything disappears. Before there were highway lights, and even other cars passing by here and there. Now, nothing. Absolutely pitch black, and every now and then you’d see a small, unlit house. If I ever become a horror-movie director, I know where I’m going.

We keep driving, and driving down this road, but we can’t find the turnoff that this blog talked about. We go down the road for about a half hour (at ridiculous speeds), and finally we stop. We can’t even see any mountains anymore; its too dark.

Its now about 330 AM, when Bharat decides to go back down the way we came. Then, on the side of the road, standing underneath the singular streetlight, is an old man. Bharat speaks Kannada the best out of everyone, so he asks him for directions.

As is typical anywhere in India, the old man is happy to give directions. Almost too happy. Its 330, shouldn’t you be asleep? We’re still not quite sure what he’s talking about, so we invite him into the car to show us (the other car, hahaha). So, we finally do find the turn off, and after about 10 minutes driving down a small, narrow, rocky road, we finally get to a temple that the blog described being next to the mountain. We’re there, finally.

To my surprise, there’s at least 10-15 other people there as well. It starts to rain a bit, but we gather our stuff, get out of our cars, and start walking to the trail that goes up the mountain. Again, let me reiterate that it’s PITCH BLACK. We had a few flashlights, but it was pretty difficult to see where we were going. The trail winds up the side of the mountain, and we started climbing officially at around 4 AM. I am not tired in the least.

We start climbing, and quickly the trail becomes fairly treacherous. At times, it was almost a 50-60 degree incline of slippery rock that needed to be scaled using both hands and feet. About an hour later, we’re halfway (or so it seems) up the mountain, and day break seems to be coming. Madhu and Kunal give up; it looked pretty hopeless. We stop every now and then, but everytime it seemed that we were finally at the top, and that the mountain couldn’t possibly be any larger, it just seemed to be getting bigger. My legs were aching rocks, and as concept of stretching hasn’t reached India quite yet, everyone else is tired as well. But, come on, it was impossible to even think about giving up. An hour later, day break comes – we had missed seeing the sunrise at the top of the mountain. But, still, can’t give up. Finally, after incredible exertion, we finally reach the top, where there’s at least 20 other people. (Where did these peeps come from, I’m thinking). Heck I saw dogs at the top.

But, we’re there. At the top. And we can’t see anything because it’s too misty. Soo anticlimactic. What’s worse, we realized the hike down would be even harder because it was slightly drizzling the entire time, and the rocks would be even more wet. But, it felt good. Maria, Aakanksha, Shashi, and myself are the only people who actually make it all the way to the top. And we just talked, and talked and took pictures for a long time. I'm going back to Hyderabad after July 31st, and Shashi and Aakanksha are also going to be there at that time, so there's a good chance that I'll have another blog about this in about a month!

Also, climbing a mountain is really tangible accomplishment. If you’re ever in need of quick reassurance, do some stretching, wear shoes that have some grip, and go climb a mountain (go be somebody!). Hahah, jk.

The trek down wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be, and we stopped multiple times to take pictures of just breathtaking views. Every now and then, in between breaks in tree, you’d find ledges from which you could see for miles. My god, the vantage point below the mist was amazing. The countryside rolled on till the horizon, and the air was so clean (huge break from pollution-filled Blore). Farms, small villages, winding roads, greenery. It felt good. I could’ve sat there all day.

But I was also INCREDIBLY HUNGRY, and I wanted nothing else but coffee, some Jilebi and a bed. We finally made it down, and drove back to Bangalore (I was passed out in the back seat), and I got home at 11. Haha, before I got home, I went into UB City Mall (the most luxurious, posh mall you’ll seriously ever see) where they had a Subway and got a sandwich. I smelled fantastic, my hair was incredibly neat, and I was not covered by dirt at all. Except not. It was awesome seeing people gawk at me. Yea, that’s right, I went hiking at 4 AM, you punk-ass mofo and it was awesome. I got back to my apt. and passed out before even knowing it.

Incredible.


I posted some pics. I, like an idiot, FORGOT MY CAMERA, and had to take pics with my phone. They’re ok. I’ll get pics from my friend Shashi soon, and post them as well.




EDIT: I'm a big fan of this picture. Looks like a Bierstadt painting.




Haha, that's Maria, not some random person! She would later drop my waterbottle down a ravine.







The mountain from a distance...

A little adventure...

So, I’ll start this one off with a little adventure I had the other day. My office itself is about a 25 minute walk from my apartment, and I as wrote in the first post, I really like walking to random places, seeing different stores, dhabas, parks, buildings, PEOPLE, etc. But this was a walking adventure taken to the limit!

Part of my first project for work heavily involves something called ‘valuation’ in finance. Why is this at all relevant? (I actually tried explaining why it is relevant, but realized it was putting me to sleep, as I’m writing this..) Anyways, long story short: there’s a lot of grunt work involved in a certain part of my project so I’m working with this other firm, on the other side of the city, to speed up the process.

I left my office at noon time on Wednesday last week, with 70 rupees in my wallet (About 1.50 dollars). I hadn’t gotten paid yet, and I’ve been converting whatever dollars I have for sustenance (aka Subway). I was running incredibly short on time, and didn’t want to arrive late and look bad, so I didn’t think to stop by the foreign exchange place close to my work before leaving. The auto ride to the other firm was 47 rupees leaving me with 23 rupees in my pocket. The other firm’s also in a busy part of the city, so I figured that there had to be a forex place that I could use after work, to get enough dough to get home. Boy was I wrong. I conveniently forgot about finding a Forex place because I was just plain tired/distracted with work all day. Everyone left at around 8, and we all had great laughs leaving the building. Happy times. Good moods. I pulled out my phone, threw on some tunes, and walked to where I could find an auto. I pulled out my wallet, and there I saw a crumpled 20 rupee note, and a few coins. Ish mang. It would be at least 75 rupees by auto, and I wasn’t familiar with buses in this part of the city.

This is where something beautiful happened. I had borrowed my sister’s Blackberry before I came to India because she couldn’t stand that it was a touchscreen, and I thought it’d be useful to have a phone with international email capabilities. I opened up Google Maps, to try to figure out where I was. I knew it had a GPS feature, but it could only ever tell me my location within a 1000 meter radius, which is not too useful.

Not this time. I saw a tiny flashing blue light that I had never seen before. I walked to the end of the street, and rechecked my phone. The little blue light that could had moved with me. For you long-time sassy Iphone and Blackberry veterans, this is commonplace. But man, being in India, on tiny roads, and having outstanding GPS service is just baller. I swear this is not an ad, haha.

Honestly, though, had I been so desperate, I’m sure I would’ve found some alternative to walking. But it’s good fun. So, I quickly mapped out a route looking at the map. I saw that I would be going on some really tiny roads, and given that it was about 8:30 and dark, I thought twice. But man, the opportunity was too good. All I ever really get to see in Bangalore, is main roads, malls, fancy stores, blah blah blah. Tourist attractions are tourist attractions.

Checking the map, and my position every so often, I started walking, going on smaller and smaller roads. Small temples, hole-in-the wall stores selling everything from shoes to jewelry, pani-puri carts, people chilling on stoops, small construction projects, COWS, huge rocks, and tiny restaurants lined the streets. One of the most interesting things is seeing tiny stores that are attached to people’s houses. Wake up in the morning, take a bath, grab a bite, open a door and you’re at work. There’s tons of places like that. The place is alive, and it’s not the Bangalore you see on Google images. I’m not attempting to romanticize anything. But do you really want to read about the same, trite descriptions of poverty? There are serious problems and they need to be addressed, but there’s no insight I can or will add on this platform.

Anyways, in the middle of all the interesting sights and smells that I was enjoying, I unceremoniously stepped in a huge pile of *****. Haha, no, it wasn’t actually any animal excrement. I mistakenly walked into a construction site, where there apparently was still a ton of wet mud. Effed up my shoe mang. A sign perhaps? Who cares, that’s why you buy cheap shoes, haha.

Door to door, it was about 2 hours. I got back, exhausted, at around 10:30, and just passed out. I’ve gone to the other office twice more, and actually had the presence of mind to get some dollars converted. But, I’ve walked home both times. I’ve posted some pictures. Not the highest quality, though, my apologies. Hope y’all are having good summers. Hit me up, I’d love to know what you’re doing.

Musings n' More

So, I finally got an apartment. The address is...well, I actually still don't know what the address is, or what the name of this apartment complex is, BUT it's located at the intersection of Vittal Mallya Road and Lavelle Road, next to the huge Cubbon Park.

It's funny, whenever venturing from Penn, everyone always comments on how nice it is to leave the 'bubble' for a while. I totally agree. One of the best feelings you can get is when you're jogging by the Schuylkill, running by the huge boathouses, looking at trees and statues, watching people picnicking, etc. It's a treat for the eyes, just to see something different.

So these last two weeks in India have been the same thing 10x over. It doesn't have to be anything visually appealing, just the novelty of seeing new stores, roads, dhabas, statues, parks, greenery is good fun. Bangalore itself has to be the greenest large city in India. Particularly the area where I live is covered with tree-lined roads.

After work, which usually gets over at 7 or 8, I like finding longer, more roundabout ways to walk home. It's a 15 minute walk home if I walk straight back, but door to door, I usually take about 2 hours, haha. I have a pretty good sense of direction, and haven't managed to go anywhere where I couldn't eventually find my way home...I've taken pictures, some funny, some jaw-dropping, some plain ordinary; I'll post them soon. Anyways, one day when walking home I ran into a guy (foreigner) I met when searching for apartments, and he had been in the same situation earlier so he gave me a few pointers. He was hanging out with a few other guys he had met while in Bangalore, and before I left, a friend of his suggested I come by to a promotion launch event his company was throwing for one of their new products the next day. I almost didn't go because I was at work till 8, and was absolutely beat, but grabbed an auto and took his directions. 20 Minutes later I arrive at the 'event', which happens to be a ginormous party in a huge club; his company is SABMiller, and the new product is a high-end beer. Haha, it was pretty awesome, and met a bunch of chill guys. More importantly, they played bhangra for quite some time, which made my day. Good fun, overall, though it had to be on a Wednesday...



Haha, and a few days before, Prasanna, from Dhamaka also happened to be in Bangalore for a day, so we had coffee. In addition to arriving late, he bored me with how his family was visiting relatives and temples and how he wasn't having fun, blah, blah, blah.

Haha, jk. Mr. Swaminasty did indeed come to Bangalore, single-handedly rekindled my faith in the human spirit, and then gave a long talk about how to face adversity with gusto. Happy Prasanna? Hahaha.

Work is fairly hard. For the first few days, I wasn't sure if the other employees were speaking in Hindi, Kannada or English. Later, I found out it was indeed English, but infused with heavily venture-capital-specific terminology, and some Hindi for kicks. I have my own projects, the first of which involves 'valuing' the companies they've invested in. But man, it's damn interesting listening to management teams of the companies in which they've invested come and talk about their operations, ideas, growth prospects, etc.

My colleagues are absolute no-nonsense types, but I've gone to dinner with them a few times, and they're real nice dudes.


Anyways, again, fingers are tired, so until next time....peace mangs

The first, hopefully not last, post....

· Hey mangs,

As some of you may know, I'm spending a big chunk of my summer (about 11 weeks) in India, specifically Bangalore. I actually got to Bangalore about a week and half back, and have promised myself every day to start a blog before a I went to sleep, but that didn't materialize. So, finally, here I am, in front of a computer, ready to write about my own musings on life here for you to enjoy/make fun of. I hope I can keep this going, and update it as often as possible because I think blogs are great ways to keep in touch with people, and jot down thoughts that I can laugh at ten years later.

Anyways! I left my city, Boston, on Friday May 26th, and flew to London, and got a connecting flight to Hyderabad. There was one difference between my flight to London with the one to Hyderabad. Namely, Indian people. LOTS of Indian people. Upon arriving at 26D on the flight, I was happy to see that it was an aisle seat and that it was right behind the bathroom. This, as I would find out shortly after the first meal, is a really bad thing. The bathroom is sort of a hangout spot for Indian people, where you can chat, hold your crying baby, fiddle with the airplane door, etc. 8 hours of that later, I was in Hyderabad, where I chilled with my grandma for a few days before I went down to Bangalore.

I got to Bangalore about 12 in the afternoon, and took a cab into the city where I had arranged (by gchat, sorta sketchy) to meet up with a real estate dude. I call him ‘dude’ and not agent because the guy was two years older than me, and his ‘office’ was his cell phone and scooter. He took me around the city, showed me a few places, and at the end of the day, I couldn’t make up my mind, so without a place to stay, I slept in park. It was awesome. The squirrels are much less aggressive than the ones in Philly.

No, I kid. Apart from the fact that there are absolutely no squirrels in Bangalore, my aunt and uncle also live in the city, so I went there, had a warm meal, great conversation and most importantly, a bath. The next day I took an auto back into the city to meet up with another real estate agent…and then another. They both showed me a few more places, but the more places they showed me, the more I realized that the best deal I had was from ‘Real Estate Dude’. I called him up, we arranged to meet a day later and negotiate. The next day I went to my office. Though it wasn’t my first day of work, I thought I’d go in, and settle all the logistics of my work. Also, for the next 9 weeks, I’m working for a venture capital firm in Bangalore. The firm has a four story building in the center of the city, but it’s nice in that they’re on a small, secluded road where there’s not much traffic, so it’s quiet mostly. There are 9 total employees in the office, including me, and we all sit in one room. Everyone has pretty decent desk space, and I guess it’s a pretty open environment to encourage’ collaboration’ (aka, I can see how much time you’re spending on Facebook, go do some work).

The firm was enough to send an ops guy to ‘negotiate’ on the apartment with me. Me and him went to the apartment, sat down with ‘real estate dude’ and the owner, and after about a half hour of throwing out numbers, I finally got it down to my target price. I took the keys, and that was it.

A few minutes after they left, I was like, ‘whoo, my own place’. A few minutes after that, I was like, ‘man, its really quiet’. Haha, the first couple days were incredibly boring aside from work, which is incredibly hard, but things got better. Anyways, my fingers are cramping up, and I can’t do this stream of consciousness thing much longer, so there will be another post soon! Miss all you guys…