I’m flying from Pune to Mumbai, then from Mumbai to Dubai, today. I should be at the Carlton Tower about 6:30 PM Dubai time.
I have Saturday morning to go seek the souk. You have a few hours to ask for me to buy you stuff before then.
I’ll be back in Portland Sunday noonish, and I’ll try to manage my jet lag as best as possible.
Last night’s absurdly good dinner was at the Meridian hotel. There were just five of us (me, Carl, Afshin, Aniruddha, and Akash) this time, but the meal cost as much as the previous night’s trip to Garden Court for 18. We had a bottle of wine and a cocktail, so the price difference isn’t as huge as that.
Meridian in Pune is a modern hotel for the expense account crowd. Carl says the rooms aren’t any better than at the Gandharv, but the lobby is amazing. There was a incredibly stupid ‘security’ process – a guy with a mirror on a stick went through the motions of looking under the car before we could get into the parking lot, and then we went through a metal detector, and got wanded, before we could enter the lobby. The security guys clearly didn’t care if anything beeped or not.
If you are in Pune, and visit the Meridian restaurant, have the morel kebab. You’re welcome.
On the way back from Meridian a band of street urchins came up and banged on our windows begging. I ignored them; I could see they were working in a large group, begging from every car at the red light in parallel. Ani and Akash tell us that they are an organized group, and it’s assumed some adult ringleader takes all the money they collect.
I was up at 4 this morning with inspiration for a work thing, and then couldn’t get back to sleep.
I overpacked insanely. The hotel does my laundry and puts it on my room tab, and it’s clean and folded when I get back to the room. Every article of clothing has a colored piece of yarn tied through the fabric, so all my stuff now has a little hole near the collar. Carl’s stuff has a different color yarn loop, so I think that’s how they keep the laundry sorted by room.
Today I had an amazingly productive run, saw Afshin off to the airport, and got in some tourist stuff in the afternoon. I am coming back with more stuff than I left with. Not sure how I’ll fit it all in…
India word of the day is “crore”. Just like lakh is 100,000, crore is ten million. One crore rupees buys a very very nice condo.
Last night we went to a restaurant called Garden Court. All our previous meals had been either the catered-in lunch at the office, or eaten at our hotel. Garden Court is better than the hotel food, and the hotel food is excellent. I got to try some Indian Chinese food, which was different. Basically they just kept putting food on my plate, a little bit at a time, until I thought I would burst. The only thing I recognized was garlic naan.
One of the guys asked me if, being from Oregon, I was interested in the Osho Ashram. I had no idea what he meant until he talked more about Osho, and I realized that was the final name taken by the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. After leaving Oregon he set up shop in Poona, and since his death in 1990, he gets more popular every year. This is probably the first time in my life I met anybody with anything good to say about him. He’s now considered one of the most influential Indian persons, in popular polls.
I’m flying out of Poona to Dubai on Friday morning, and I’m kind of dreading it. Poona to Dubai isn’t a nonstop anymore, probably because they are remodeling the Poona airport and there is no working passport control counter. This means changing planes and going through passport control in Mumbai. Here is how that day will probably go:
… and then Afshin will want to go clubbing. Thankfully my flight from Dubai to Portland doesn’t leave until late on Saturday evening, so I will get to do some touristy stuff.
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