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I am back home, and pretty much back in this time zone too. I still have a lot of work to figure out which of the 100s of pictures to post from the remainder of my trip. I just spent a few minutes and re-organized the photo album into sub albums for easier navigation of pics. I have also spent some time adding in more of the places I visited on my google maps page. That is a very cool tool, I’ll be updating that to have more pics and links soon as well.

All and all, the trip was well worth it, if you have a chance to go to India, do it. No questions. Even if it is for a short period. Any regrets? Yeah, I wish I had more time in Pune, the guys in our office there were awesome, and I’d love to get to see the sites around there. I also wish I had time to go to Goa, and maybe spend more time in Agra as well. I meant some great people in Jaipur who went to the Taj 4 or 5 times, they caught it at sunrise and sunset, and said it was stunning. I was amazed at 3 in the afternoon, so I can only imagine.

So like I said, I’ll be posting more pics and also a few more blog entries with more details on the my travels within Jaipur, Delhi, and Agra. Please check back, I personally think it’s much more interesting to hear the story behind the pics, and I plan to show that even more than I have in my other blog entries.

Take care, Adam

Update: I’ve introduce this logo (actually lifted from the google earth page) that will link to current My Maps in the future.

I’m taking a little break from packing my bag, if my attempts at jamming everything into that suitcase can even be called packing, to post a little update. I haven’t posted much in the last few days mostly due to me being so busy and tired. Internet access was available, but required more effort than I was willing to expend. I have been taking a lot of pictures, and I will probably not end up posting most of them until I get back. so to all of you out there who said, “Take lots of pictures!” you won’t be disappointed. I do want to at least give some idea of what I’ve done since my last post.

I went to the monkey palace bright in early in the morning on Sunday (more…)

I had opted to take the drive from Pune to Mumbai instead of a flight, hoping to see a bit more of the country, which was quite nice, but took around 4 hours. It would have been ok, but I was feeling pretty out of sorts; I’m pretty sure that was due to some sort of run in with the local water. I have a prescription for antibiotics, but of course, that was in my luggage, which was not yet in my company.

When I arrived in Mumbai I checked into the Hotel Orchid again and then stayed up till 12:30 to wait for my luggage to arrive, which it finally did. I immediately took my antibiotics and started my anti-malarial medication again. Then I went to bed so I could get up before 5 for my flight to Jaipur.

So I’m now in Jaipur (more…)

Oh thank heavens! So it turns out that the number and address I had for our Unica offices was out of date. That and the cell phone I have is out of contract, so just about all of the info that I gave British Airways was no good. But Bhakti (the executive assistant here) was able to sort it out and my bag will be delivered to the office here tomorrow! I am relieved; I was quite worried that I’d be traveling north without my stuff, which would not have been fun. Ok, I can relax now — Thank you Bhakti!! BTW, that’s a picture of the building that the Unica India office is in.

Update: I had a some spare time so I created a Google Maps overview of my trip so far, with pictures and links to the gallery. Pretty nifty - I’ll be using this for future travels for sure.

I just had a great evening! Last night the eMessage team went out to eat at an all you can eat kebab restaurant. We sat outside, next to the grill and steamer where they were making the kebabs. And I got schooled in great Indian cuisine; Abhay, Ranjit, Sagar, and Manas were all very keen on explaining the different foods from their different areas of India, they really have quite a variety. To cap it off we had W[paan]] , which was all sorts of stuff inside some plant leaves. It is supposed to aid in digestion; let me tell you, it works. I probably ate two to three meals worth of kebab, as well as two tapioca and ice cream deserts, and I felt like I could go for round two.

It’s great being over here with such a fantastic group of people. Everyone has been extremely helpful in every way. Now if I could just get British Airways to do the same… I still don’t have my bag and I haven’t been able to get in touch with them.

Check out the updates to the gallery as well…

I’m taking a quick break at work to post another update. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, I’m stuck somewhere between EDT and India time, so I fell asleep around 11 and woke up at 3:30. Apparently jetlag has placed me somewhere around London, oh well. So I was up early and snapped a pic not too long after sunrise, it was quite beautiful.

One of the guys from the Unica India office, Ashutosh, picked me up today, the Gordon House is on his way to work. It was a good drive in, some of the same traffic, there aren’t really any lanes here either, just a bunch of cars zipping around, but at least there was a median divider! Ashutosh has one of those great little cars, it’s smaller than a mini, and zips around real nice. He was telling me how he used to have a “normal” sized car by US standards, but it ate too much gas and was much harder to drive around in. It’s definitely fun to sit back and watch how these guys navigate the streets.

The office is in a bit of an upheaval since they have just expanded their space. But I managed to land an office for my time here, check out the view 1, 2, 3. It’s great to be here, everyone is very accommodating and extremely nice. But I have to get back to work. I hope everyone is doing well back in the states, take care!

Well, I think this is my first transcontinental post, though I may have posted from France at one point. Either way, this is my first time on the Asian sub-continent. It’s been an experience getting here, and I don’t have a lot of time before I have to head out to catch my flight to Pune. It was a long trip in here, my flight to JFK from Raleigh was delayed, so I had to run to catch my connection. Then I had a 6 hour flight to Heathrow, then 8.5 hours to Mumbai (aka Bombay). The flights were quite cozy since I was flying world traveler on British airways. I have some pics that I’ll try to upload later.

The fun part was landing in Mumbai, I knew that would be quite the experience. It was made even more fun by extending my stay in the airport. You see, although I ran to catch my connection to Heathrow, it seems my bag didn’t. So it’s not here with me. Finally I got to the hotel room around 2:00AM local time, that’s around 4:30PM EDT. Having only slept a few hours total on the trip I was a bit tired.

The trip from the airport to the hotel was very interesting. A lot of this area is pretty poor. I saw quite a few people sleeping on the sidewalk. Lots of interesting colorful places though. I’ll try to take some pics on the way back to the airport.

I went out today for an hour to a market to buy some clothes, since all I have is what I wore over right now. It was much more interesting to sit in the auto-rickshaw during the day than a car at night. The people and stores are very colorful and the markets are full of fresh produce and people selling wares. It’s pretty amazing, somewhat similar to the markets I’ve seen in St. Lucia and Costa Rica.

I have to say that after a long flight, and losing my luggage I was a bit worried. I’ve been apprehensive for the last few days, worrying about finding my way around or getting hassled. But today was really good, I think this trip will turn out great! :) Of course there’s lots more to talk about, but I only have 1 hour of net access and I have to respond to some emails. I just wanted to post a little update and some pics.

Update: I have just created an India Gallery, all my latest pics will be posted there.

I fancy myself an amature photographer; I don’t think I’m very good, but I like to attempt to find nice shots. I’ve come up with a few here and there (truly needs updating). I can’t hold a flame to these shots from world press photos, which was described on BoingBoing as “the most prestigious photojournalism competition in the world”. Some of these are very intense.