Sightseeing in Pune, India

Although the plan was to meet at 9:00 this morning, I got a call from the front desk at 7:00 to tell me that the driver was waiting. It turned out that it was the wrong driver, and that he had the wrong time. Since I was awake, I went ahead and got up anyway, and met my colleague Marsha for breakfast a little later. We then checked out of the hotel and met up with the others in our party.

We set out for Pune in much lighter Sunday morning traffic, and made good time. The drive through the Ghat mountains was interesting. I think that the views would have been even more impressive had they not been marred by the ever present smog. It took about three hours to drive the 75 miles between Mumbai and Pune.

Once in town, we checked into our hotels and then met up again to decide on our entertainment for the day. We started out with lunch at a very typical Indian restaurant. When I say that, I meant that it is where the locals would eat. I was, of course, excited about this and dined very well. Many of my colleagues and many of my friends will be jealous to hear about this. After lunch, we stopped briefly at a stall in the street to sample a treat made by stuffing various herbs and spices and things into a betel leaf. This is then eaten. It was very good!

Next, it was time to do some shopping for the folks back home. This meant gifts for my wife and all of the children, and also a couple of bags of Bhkarwadi for the folks in the office. This delicious Indian treat is always popular!

Once the shopping was complete, we went on to briefly visit an old fort in town. I forget exactly how old it was. One interesting feature was a mass of spikes on the doors. We were wondering why they would be so high up though - well above head height. Apparently, it was to stop attackers from using elephants to batter down the doors! Very clever. We weren't able to actually enter the fort, since it was closed for a special celebration today.

So, instead, we made our way to a museum in town. This was a collection of Indian artifacts collected by a single man over the course of his lifetime. There was an enormous number of very interesting things. By the time that we left, it was about 9:00 in the evening and we were exhausted. So, we came back to the hotel for the night.

Incidentally, to give you an idea of scale, the populate of Pune is 3.85 million, while Mumbai is bigger at 18 million - the third largest city in the world.