Indian updates

Okay, so I have plenty in my journal that I need to transcribe to take you all on my Indian journey but I had to laugh heartily at getting THIS today from Groupon.

Fantastic! And for a restaurant we love to go to for lunch at work.

But someone let the owners get creative with writing their copy for the daily deal.  Lost in translation?  You decide.  Here's the text that came with the offer today:

"Indian food is quickly becoming one of America's most popular ethnic cuisines, as evidenced by the upsurge in new restaurants and the nationwide fervor over chutney trading cards. Get a seat on the bandwagon with today’s Groupon: for $20, you get $40 worth of Indian cuisine at the Indian Harvest Restaurant, located in Naperville.

The restaurant's expansive menu takes taste buds on a tour of India’s famous, mouth-drenching dishes. Rev up jowl bones with appetizers, including dahi bhalla, soft lentil puffs soaked in spiced yogurt and topped with coriander leaves ($4.95), or vegetable samosas ($3.50). Lamb specials such as gosht chili masala, cooked with hot spices, herbs, and green chilies ($13.95), and tandoor -roasted items that include tandoori chicken ($14.95), let patrons use their canine teeth for more than snarling at mail carriers. Herbivores can dive into vegetarian dishes, such as the eggplant-rich baghara baingan ($10.95), and employ naan ($2) as a makeshift visor while catching scenic lake views from the dining room."

Now, I need to know what this nationwide fervor over chutney trading cards is!!  Also, given my weight, I'm not a fan of the world jowl but hey, I get what you're groovin'.  But when you start digging into my canine teeth, I need to stop you right there because I only snarl at the mail carrier when he delivers me bills.  I'll leave the rest of the time for snarling by my beloved golden retriever.

Lastly, I've been to this restaurant several times and unless the scenic lake views are new paintings on the walls, there's only a retention pond across the street by the Wonder Bread outlet store.

I love it.  So there is the arc in my blog.  Two entries ago was about the Groupon craze and I've brought a little bit of India into the mix.

Therefore, "Look with your glazing eyes soon to the wondrous words of a babbling idiot who will beautifully summarize his daily, mysterious adventures in the homeland known as India.  It will be material you can sink your molars into like a masticating big black bear in the open spaces of Montana"  ;-p

I'm off on the road to India....

Cue Hope and Crosby with the rest, well, substitute India for Morocco.

So now within 18 hours of take-off for an 18 hour set of flights to Hyderabad, India.

Lots of stuff running through my head, none more important than the instability in the Middle East and the fact that I'll be half a world away from my loved ones.

Freedom is a wacky thing, innit?  To get it, you have to fight like hell and it's never easy, lives are lost and there is a lot of pain.  Then when you have it, you fight like hell about what kind of version of freedom is best (see Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, etc. etc. etc.)

So I'm trying to pack lightly and think I won't have a problem with that.  Most of my days are in business-type meetings and for the few days I have to my own I can pretty much wear the same pants, just change shirts.  Although I'm gone for 8 calendar days, you basically spend 2 in the air, so it's not a difficult pack to do.

I also bought something on the advice of my friend Thomas who is also on this trip with me.  It's called a SteriPen and it's a rather small device that uses Ultra-Violet light to sterilize quantities of drinking water.  The link is the version I bought (Dick's Sporting Goods only had 2 choices) and it can take care of 0.5L and 1.0L quantities in something like 24 seconds.

I've started downing my malaria pills as well.  One a day for two days before being in-country and then one each day there and then one a day for 7 days after returning home.  I also have some Ciprofloxacin in case I get a case of Montezuma's revenge.  Although since I'll be in India what would it be called?  Ghandi's revenge? But he was a pacifist so that doesn't work.

I also had to quickly find some adapters for electronic devices.  Because India was long-held a British territory their outlets are UK-like, however, it's not the modern-day UK plug, it's the "old world" kind which most places do not sell.  Thank the Lord that we have a decent sized Indian population in Chicago as I was able to find no less than 20 electronic stores, most on Devon Ave. (Little India) but I did find one out near O'Hare airport.  They couldn't have been nicer people and frankly at $1.79 a piece, I bought 3!

For my last "dinner", we took a somewhat cranky Aidan to Buffalo Wild Wings and they had a new limited time sauce called Thai Curry.  I tried it and it was pretty good.  Might as well get my body ready for the curry (yes, I know Thai is not Indian, that's not the point).

Just synchronizing up my laptop so that all my files are backed up on the corporate network and then I'll finish packing.  Oh hey, and for all my metal-head friends, I'm downloading the Lemmy documentary which would be something only I would watch in my household so better to enjoy it on a long flight.  Here's a 5-minute movie trailer for those who want to enjoy!!  (and you know who you are!)




Until later.......Namaste!

India continues to take shape

Well, I go for round two of the shots today.

Not too thrilled about that, however I am encouraged that it took less than a week for the Indian Consulate here in Chicago to process my Visa and get it back to me.

I've also finally chosen a hotel for my 2.5 day side excursion to New Delhi as well as booked my train tickets to and from Agra so that I can go see the Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort.

I didn't skimp on the hotel and am staying at the InterContinental at Nehru Place (jackets not required ;-p)

I will truly get to experience the two extremes of India train travel.  Going, I'm traveling in one of the top classes (AC Executive Chair Class) but my return is in Sleeper Class.  The difference in class of travel is staggering considering the price for each; $18 versus $3.80 and it promises to be very interesting.

3 hours each way so that will give me plenty of time to take it all in.  I had to book the lower class return (gets back at 5:20pm) otherwise I wouldn't get back to Delhi until 9:15pm only to have to head directly to the Airport for my flight home (Leaves at 1:20 am).  God forbid there was any delay on the train, I'd be fighting for my way home and based on a few sources I've chatted with, Indian trains aren't necessarily known for their timeliness.

Exteriors	Interiors

They look the same from the outside, but ohhhh what a difference inside.  Maybe it's good I'm getting the shots :-)  But I will have my trusty backpack in tow, carrying the essentials.  Sadly it's not the one I used for my extensive Europe trips as that one finally died a miserable death.

It's amazing that once I look at my agenda, I've realized how little time I truly have in India outside of the work schedule but I am going to squeeze every ounce/gram out of the free time I have.

Still have to figure out what I want to do on the Friday in New Delhi as well as the Monday in Hyderabad but I have time for that as there's no train travel or anything that I have to worry about.

India plans progressing

So yesterday my process of getting all plans sorted for my trip to India continued.

Airlines are now booked.  I'm flying business class Air India from O'Hare to Delhi to Hyderabad.  We don't have to get off the plane in Delhi which makes this an 18 hour trip.

Hotel is the Taj Krishna Hyderabad and the only pictures I can really find of the place all are taken from the pool area so here you go.

It looks like a huge hotel and it's only about 4 miles from the airport which is good since we get in around 8:00pm and then will have to negotiate customs, etc.

On the way back though, I'm going to stop in Delhi and spend two days sightseeing based out of there.  To get from Hyderabad to Delhi I'm flying on Kingfisher Airlines.


Now, I know they make a pretty decent beer as I've had it COUNTLESS times at all my favorite Indian restaurants, but I wonder what kind of airline they are?  Well, based on the pictures of the owner who looks like a cross between Richard Branson and, well, the kinda guys you find in big-time dance clubs in NYC, I'm thinking it's gonna be a pretty rockin' two-hour flight.


Yeah baby, let's party!

I have my first trip to the doctor on Friday to determine which sets of shots I'm going to need and scheduling when I'm supposed to get them. I also have to book my hotel in Delhi at some point as well. Anyone have any suggestions?

Countdown has begun and it's now only 37 days until I leave.  Stay tuned!

I put Hyderabad into my GPS...

...and my cyber-bitch said "I can only take you to the airport, the rest is on your own".

So at the end of February/beginning of March I will be taking a business trip to Hyderabad, India.  We have some fairly large operations there and our parent company is sponsoring an Operations Conference.

When I first heard, of course, my thoughts go to being away from my family and being really FAR from my family for about a week, especially since we're going to be on personal vacation for just about the two weeks just before this.

Then my thoughts went to the almost 18 hours in the air it's going to take to get there and I wondered if I would go stir crazy on either leg of the trip.

I've long been used to the eight hours to mainland Europe but on the last couple of trips I found myself getting very antsy about five hours in.  What in the world will I do for 18 hours?  You can only watch so many movies, listen to so much iPod, sleep so much.  Truth be told, I'm a horrible worker on a plane.  I can never get comfortable enough to work on my laptop plus I usually don't have an electrical outlet near me and for some reason the work laptop's batteries only last about two hours at max!

But eventually it has sunk in how fortunate I am to work for a company who wanted me at this conference and feel that my presence there is important to our longer term strategy and plans.

I'm also excited to take a day or two for personal excursions.  I'm not sure what all is around Hyderabad or even how close some of the favorite tourist spots are yet.  If you haven't taken a look at it in awhile, it's a massively huge country.  It's the seventh largest country (land area) in the world and the second largest by population.  On the Southern end it looks like there's some prime relaxation near a massive coastline and a short hop, skip and jump over to Sri Lanka.  Of course, to the North, you're heading up near Nepal and Pakistan.  What will NOT be lost on me is how close I'll be to Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq and as an American these are important spots in my lifetime.
Today we got a list of things we need to get done before we even THINK about heading to India.  Need to get a visa (what? MasterCard isn't good enough? I keed!) and so I have to submit my passport, copy of my driver's license, money (of course), 2 more passport-type photos, letters from my employer, our operations in India as well as a legal firm who works with the Indian consulate to get all this stuff done, oh and a short power of attorney-type statement for that firm.

 And if the paperwork don't kill ya', I gots to go and get me a whole bunch of shots (not the Jägermeister kind either!) to ward off whatever ails me or what CAN ail me.

So hey, if anything, there's gonna be some good blogging material over the next couple of months, plus loads of pictures!!  Stay tuned!

International Travel & Food Adventures, Part II

Well, unfortunately my last evening in the UK had me going down the burger route again.  The problem with staying at a hotel literally inside of Heathrow is that there's no where to go without spending a fortune on taxi fare, so alas, we ate here in the Sheraton Hotel.

I'm assuming that the custom-made burger craze (here), (here) and (here) is starting to gather some steam outside of the US, however the execution of that fails miserably amongst the business traveler hotels.

1. I didn't get any choices, the "create your own" was already done on the menu and there were about three options in total.
2. This concept fails when you have chuk-chuk the caveman burning the burger, the base of the creation, to it's miserable death back in the kitchen

That said it had the makings of a good idea especially if you are on the Atkins diet.  Burger, topped with a chicken breast, topped with bacon (English bacon, so basically Canadian Bacon), topped with cheese all on one of those Bap buns (see yesterday's post or click on link).  I took it upon myself to top it off with some brown sauce.

Sadly the burger was dense and medium well/dry as hell.  Everything on top of it was stellar.  How I was yearning for a Lamb Kofta burger again!

So anyway, I catch the shuttle bus into the Heathrow Terminal in three and a half hours and then it's breakfast inside the airport.  I have high hopes for that and will report back later.

International Travel & Food Adventures

Although I'm in the midst of a 4-week travel hell tour of the world (only being outdone by friend Tom Paul who will earn airline status in a period of 4 weeks!!) the one thing I always love about traveling internationally is the chance to experience "new foods" or rather foods that I normally wouldn't see on an American menu and that tickle my fancy.

The last two nights have seen some fun choices which I'm happy to share with you.

Last night I had a starter called "Duck Pancakes".  I threw caution to the wind and didn't even ask what they were.  One could envision big American style pancakes with duck embedded but what arrived was really a 'build your own' taco/wrap with pulled duck breast meat, small pastry type 'shells' and a wonderful Hoisin sauce to dip them in.  The only knock was that the wrap was too doughy and broke up too easily once stuffed with the ducky goodness and dipped into the sauce.  All in all though, a really nice surprise and a good contrast to the typical Fish & Chips and mushy peas that I ordered.

Tonight, I tried a Lamb Kofta burger which was the bomb!!  It was a great re-purposing of what traditionally is a kabob.  The seasonings were done just right.  Normally a kofta has things like garlic, ginger and cardamom but I think I tasted some clove in there as well.  One of the drawbacks of it was that the bun was a really dense Bap bread.

Stupid me now has a phone that can take pictures but did I take one (of EITHER food)??  No, so here are two images, one of a Bap bun and one of Lamb Kofta.  You do the photoshopping in your head okay?

The frustrating thing about this is that when I get back stateside I end up having a craving for something like this and can't find it worth a lick.  This happened in 2004 when I had pleasure of eating a combination of two of my most favorite foods, Indian and Italian with a Chicken Tikka Pizza in Edinburgh, Scotland.  Call it a desperate cry for decent food when the local fare isn't that hot, but I've been talking about that pizza ever since!!

Can't wait to see what my final night brings for dinner!  Tomorrow I'm heading back to London as my flight home is ridiculously early in the morning on Friday.  London opens up many doors, unfortunately, I'm housed right next to Heathrow and so that'll limit anything of true quality, maybe...