Yes, I am in India for the week.
My initial impressions weren't great. Stepping out of the airport at Mumbai was like walking into a steam room. I then had the fun of an almost four hour drive to Pune, nearly half of which was just fighting our way out of the city.
Mumbai itself, or at least the bits of it I saw, was pretty grim. Great piles of rubble and filth lining the sides of the roads and makeshift shacks all over the place. On the plus side, the drive itself wasn't nearly as scary as the trips I'd had in Hyderabad. People seemed to generally drive in a rational manner, stopping at red lights and junctions, remaining on their own side of the road almost all the time, you know, the usual. Of course there was the constant swerving between lanes to try and get round slower moving vehicles, not that 'lane' really applies given that lanes seem to be defined only by how many vehicles can squeeze side by side on a given piece of tarmac.
Once we were out of the city and onto the expressway the journey was fine. The road was fairly clear and apart from a few parts where hugely laden ancient trucks laboured up hill at 5 miles an hour while my driver whizzed past them there were no incidents.
Pune itself is much nicer than Mumbai, the air isn't so humid and the streets are much cleaner. I was a little concerned by the security at the hotel, which is more thorough than is common at even an airport. Upon arrival the car was swabbed (presumably for explosives), searched and checked underneath with mirrors before being admitted to a kind of airlock. The car wasn't able to proceed until the gate behind was closed, at which point the huge spikes which had been blocking our forward process were lowered. That wasn't the end of it though. After exiting the vehicle I had to pass through a metal detector and have my bags x-rayed, before finally getting into the hotel.
So, I started to wonder. Is someone trying to blow up international hotels in Pune? Should I be worried? We didn't have security like that in Hyderabad, but maybe they assumed the traffic would get us before the bombs did...
My initial impressions weren't great. Stepping out of the airport at Mumbai was like walking into a steam room. I then had the fun of an almost four hour drive to Pune, nearly half of which was just fighting our way out of the city.
Mumbai itself, or at least the bits of it I saw, was pretty grim. Great piles of rubble and filth lining the sides of the roads and makeshift shacks all over the place. On the plus side, the drive itself wasn't nearly as scary as the trips I'd had in Hyderabad. People seemed to generally drive in a rational manner, stopping at red lights and junctions, remaining on their own side of the road almost all the time, you know, the usual. Of course there was the constant swerving between lanes to try and get round slower moving vehicles, not that 'lane' really applies given that lanes seem to be defined only by how many vehicles can squeeze side by side on a given piece of tarmac.
Once we were out of the city and onto the expressway the journey was fine. The road was fairly clear and apart from a few parts where hugely laden ancient trucks laboured up hill at 5 miles an hour while my driver whizzed past them there were no incidents.
Pune itself is much nicer than Mumbai, the air isn't so humid and the streets are much cleaner. I was a little concerned by the security at the hotel, which is more thorough than is common at even an airport. Upon arrival the car was swabbed (presumably for explosives), searched and checked underneath with mirrors before being admitted to a kind of airlock. The car wasn't able to proceed until the gate behind was closed, at which point the huge spikes which had been blocking our forward process were lowered. That wasn't the end of it though. After exiting the vehicle I had to pass through a metal detector and have my bags x-rayed, before finally getting into the hotel.
So, I started to wonder. Is someone trying to blow up international hotels in Pune? Should I be worried? We didn't have security like that in Hyderabad, but maybe they assumed the traffic would get us before the bombs did...
