I’m feeling quite challenged to write about our travels so far, having arrived and settled into our accommodation in Pune for 3 days now.
Everything about India is almost inexpressible in words – the sights, sounds, smells and textures. Writing feels daunting to ensure I describe in words everything we see, hear, smell and feel. This is an incredible place. I will post a video shortly with all the things to provide more context.
So that said, here it goes:
Monday 6 January
Our first leg of travel from New Zealand to Hong Kong was entirely uneventful with great food and entertainment on Cathay Pacific – 10 hours was enough though. We arrived just before midnight, greeted by a half-moon in a horizontal form rather than on the vertical, and as our luggage was checked through all the way to Bombay, we were travelling incredibly light with just our cabin backpacks. The clothes on our backs and a toothbrush - all very Jack Reacher like.
Having travelled through the airport via train, we waited for 45 minutes for our Hotel shuttle, where we were greeted with a room upgrade overlooking a waterway and vistas of planes landing and taking off, the rapid transit system and the gondola.
We would like to visit Hong Kong again in the future and spend some decent time there exploring and taking it all in. 
Tuesday 7 January
After a good sleep, we enjoyed breakfast at the Hotel and availed ourselves of 2 bananas stashed away for lunch. Then back off to the Airport for a long wait before catching our evening flight and second leg to Bombay. It was great to track our backpack air tags travelling through the airport and loaded onto our plane with us. System works!
The flight from Hong Kong was very, very challenging – lots of small children and also our proximity to the bathrooms. Andrew slept most of the way and I dozed as best one can on a plane.
On arrival to Bombay, the airport was practically empty and after grabbing a tuk-tuk I then experienced Mumbai at night for the first time – exceptionally chaotic and fabulous.
Our tuk-tuk driver got lost, but eventually we were delivered to our accommodation in Santa Cruz.
We had a restless (and frankly quite frightening) overnight stay in Mumbai as we were directly beneath the flight path to the Airport and a plane would arrive every 10 minutes – sometimes flying so low that the entire home shook.
Wednesday 8 January
We took the opportunity to explore around Santa Cruz on foot and the stark contrast of opulent homes next to people living under bridges and took the opportunity just to take it all in.
Then we experienced real Indian life with a cold bucket shower and then enjoyed breakfast with our homestay host.
We understand that the hostess had been on the StarTV cooking show (akin to Master Chef from what we could gather) and often people stay at this homestay to experience the cooking produced from the Hostess.
We enjoyed potato paratha, cheese onion and chive toasties, mango pickle, green chilli paste, lentil breakfast salad with cucumber and tomatoes, homemade masala spice over yoghurt, bananas and black coffee.
We also learnt about our homestays family – their son was in Delhi and quite high up at Atlassian, and their daughter was an IT Consultant in Bangaluru (and also a table tennis champion for India).
After saying our goodbyes, we hired a tuk-tuk from the stand to take us to LTT Train Station to catch our train to Pune. The tuk-tuk to the station was something out of a theme park – I have absolutely no idea how the driver snuck past various obstacles and hurtled at such speed past everything that was sharing the road. It really was chaos theory in action. Oh, and the fee for the ride increased another 50 rupees on arrival to the station – the thrill ride was worth the fare increase!
The roads are utter chaos but somehow, it all just works. You just keep tooting and eventually you’ll get through.
We ended up waiting at the station for nearly 2.5 hours which provided a perfect opportunity to do some people watching. A man asleep on the floor moved on by station security with the whack of a stick; women with huge packages balanced on their heads heading to a train; young professionals off to their next destination; military personnel waiting for their trains armed with firearms. I enjoyed my first chai from a chaiwala vender – it was fabulous.
And then I experienced the public toilets of the Lokmanya Tilak Train Station. Needless to say, I survived. And this is all the real India I came here to experience after all.
We boarded the train on Platform 4 bound for Pune, allocated seats in 3AC – this was quite the experience with many very young families travelling and plenty of interruptions with offers of food, and “very good” coffee from vendors.
The train was slow but interesting with so much going on both inside and outside the train – so much so my eyes couldn’t keep up.
As the train approach Pune there was lots of pushing and shoving to get to the doors even through the train was still in motion. A food vendor carrying a large orange basin on his head, tried to push past the queued folk and ended up stuck behind me. And I was stuck behind a mountain of luggage that had been stashed in front of the train doors, and with 20kgs of luggage attached to myself as well. After a lot of yelling at me which could be universally translated as “MOVE!” I managed to plaster myself against the train wall like a clam, he managed to get past and all was right again in the world.
The train stopped and the chap in front of me disembarked the train and promptly dumped his luggage in the exit way of the train – which with my step down and additional 20kgs of momentum, managed to spectacularly trip over. Fabulous – welcome to India!
We then took a tuk-tuk to Koragoan Park, found our accommodation in a lovely leafy and relatively quiet lane, with a meshed deck overlooking the street – a dinner of oats and dahi (yoghurt) followed by a hot shower and I hit the hay – we had finally arrived in Pune.
Thursday 9 January
We awoke to a nourishing breakfast of ½ can of tuna and oats and coconut milk. Full disclosure, I am gluten intolerant and generally have a very annoying sensitive stomach (I know, great affliction for India!) and so we are ensuring that our diet is a balance between experiencing fabulous Indian food and catering too for what my stomach can handle.
Sitting out on our balcony we enjoy the birdlife of the morning – I have dubbed these beautiful brown falcons “Rachel Hawks” after my sister (who loves NZ Falcon), I think they are called Black Kites, and also a bird that goes Hoop-Hoop-Hoop in a rising inflection, is silent in pause, and then starts the tune all over again. I think these are called Asian koels.
Our first mission was to find a good coffee – which we did at Wildbean Café – although the café had no milk so we enjoyed 2 long blacks. Typical Indian supply issues meaning half the stuff on the menu may or may not be available – although milk in a café is sort of a given requirement.
We walked along the HH Agakhan Bridge – quite the experience walking over the river and taking in the environment of the river, and I saw a squirrel which naturally was a highlight.
We walked past various highrise IT Hubs to find D-Mart (a rather odd hybrid bric a brac supermarket, and not what we wanted) and various open excavations in the road and drains with busy workers which set my HSEQ antenna into overdrive.
After an unsuccessful supermarket shop mission, we caught the Metro from Kalyani Nagar back to Bund Garden and then played dodgems to make our way back to our apartment on foot – all rather fabulous.
We were both feeling the effects of jetlag, found a friendly superette to stock up on peanuts, tuna, tinned beans, nacho chips, coffee and my live or die spice, cinnamon; then next door to the fruit and vege shack for avocado, okra, apples and oranges.
We took a side street back to the apartment and found the source of the 3am glass shattering noises – a recycling plant. Mystery solved. Along the way we observed many cows, goats, dogs and cats.
Friday 10 January
We were picked up at 10am by a business friend of Andrews – Sachin – who drove us to the Pashan area to his business. Andrew enjoyed a catch up with Sachin and his business partner. Sachin and his business partner were extremely kind and forthcoming with lots of information regarding Pune, places to visit across India and a micro history of India mythology. I have much to research regarding Rama, Sita and Hanuman.
They kindly provided us water, real Indian coffee (sweet and delicious – like dessert) and chai, before presenting us both with the most beautiful bouquet of flowers each as a welcome. The generous welcome continued as we were taken to Absolute BBQ in the White Square Building with some of the team, who kindly helped us understand the food arriving (crispy corn, BBQ fish and chicken and panipuri), and adjusting the spiceness order for us.
We enjoyed a really lovely conversation with the team, with a to and fro of questions about India and New Zealand.
Tummies full, we thought that was it – but we were then invited to head to the buffet for the main! I had some paneer curry and my favourite, dal makhani. One of the team observed that the rest of the world eats with their stomach, while India eats with its tongue – and I could not agree more.
Finally, we were given a dessert to try – jalebi. It’s made with flour, fried and then dipped into a sweet syrup that’s citrusy. Utterly delicious.
Sachin kindly returned us back to Koregoan Park in the late afternoon, providing lots of opportunity to observe all the happenings out the window.
We spent the rest of the evening watching the Friday evening commuters make their way home after work, and lasted until 8.15pm before calling it a day. It was a wonderful day.
Saturday 11 January
That's today! Yay, we are now all caught up!
Today it was our mission to find a supermarket (spoiler alert, we did not) and also explore Phoenix Mall.
We took the Metro from Bund Garden to Ramwadi and walked through the Phoenix Mall – very similar to the enormous malls in Dubai with exclusive shops and the most wonderful window displays – perfect to wander around and explore.
We found a great coffee shop, Aur Coffee, and ordered a Flat White & Long Black (both fabulous) for the equivalent of NZD $6.
While there a young professional, Rishabh, seated beside us asked if we were German. And what ensued was a lovely conversation with this young man who was fluent in Hindi, English, French and German, along with some Spanish. He had dreams to move to Switzerland through his work as a transfer, along with his wife and 5 month old baby girl.
We then walked to where there should have been a big supermarket as marked on google maps (there was not) and so back on the Metro to Bund Garden and back to our faithful local superette and fruit and vege vendor around the corner for a few more supplies (chocolate – an essential!) before arriving back at our apartment.
This evening we plan to watch the hindi movie “Pushpa – The Rise” which we understand is like an Indian James Bond type movie. The sequel, “Pushpa 2 – The Rule” was released in cinemas in December and is reportedly the highest grossing movie for any movie in India to date. We plan to go see this in a theatre over the next few days.
India – a few random notes of my experience so far
Unlike Andrew, who has been to India so many times, for me as a first-time visitor, India so far has been simply extraordinary. I have had my share of double-takes and long uncomfortable stares having all of a short haircut, blonde and blue eyes. However it is more curiosity than in menace, and in the reality of day to day here in India that we have been apart of, it is unusual for westerners taking 3AC train transport, ride the metro and walk everywhere (which we love) - it is quite unusual.
My only concern here is the smog. I haven’t suffered from asthma in over 20 years, and unfortunately India is not my friend in this regard. I am wearing a mask while walking and travelling via tuk-tuks which is really helping, but being able to take a long deep clean breath of air is something I am missing from New Zealand.
The Air Quality here in Pune is rated at around 160 – Unhealthy, being 5 times higher than the WHO safe level, and the equivalent of smoking 3 cigarettes a day. By comparison, Auckland’s AQI is 23 – Good and almost 4 times lower than the WHO safe level.
Whew! If you made it this far – congrats, and thank you for sticking with me! More musings to follow soon!
This featured blog entry was written by nzfrankiebeans from the blog A Life Less Ordinary.
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