Sunday, August 23, 2009

Nice places, wonderful views, perfect weather, amazing food, good people!

This is how I would put it if I were to cut a long story short. Working on my project's assignmets I have been sent by the company to its other locations. I was traveling to Nashik and Igatpuri - places located 4 hours away from Mumbai (don't ask how many kilometers - I really don't know;)
My journey started at 6 in the morning, I took the company bus which left my Kandivili office at 6 am sharp! Sharp, really! I was impressed too! :) I was extremely sleepy (like only I can be at 6 am) so was hoping to get some sleep on the way.

Surprise number 12
Sleep?! No way! I know I used to complain about Polish roads but you can't really compare our Polish highways to what you can experience here!
Well, I wanted to sleep but I just kept jumping up and down! Before coming to India I had heard many stories about Indian infrastructure... After experiencing local trains, water issues, elecricity problems, lack of proper public transportation I can only add the quality of roads to the list of infrastructure surprises.

Not being able to sleep I was just observing the views outside. As we kept moving towards our destination the views around became nicer and nicer. Green hills, small rivers, almost clean (!!) roads, untouched nature. I was so sorry I didn't have my camera :( You can't really see such places in Europe, looking as if time stopped there some 50 years ago.

Nashik, the city of my destination was unfortunatelly again reminding me of Mumbai. Of course it was smaller and less crowded but still dirty, with many homeless people (unless you can say a carton box is a house) and the same crazy traffic.
It must be one of the industrial centres near Mumbai as Mahindras' plant was not the only one there.
As I went there to interview the top 20 Gallup scorers I spent two days running and driving around the plant in order to talk to them. Getting to know their practices, their opinions, getting familarized with an Indian working style was a very interesting experience.
In the night I was accomodated in one of the M&M guest houses. Nice, decent place, wonderful service and food! Amazing! As I informed them well in advance that I can't have spicy Indian food they prepared something special for me!
It wasn't spicy at but still prepared in an Indian way! Luckily I met two other trainees there, guys from Singapore who took me for a short walk. Weather was just great, a bit cooler than in Mumbai and not humid at all! The place was very quite and peacful - good change after the noise of Bombay.

On my way back I spent another day in Igatpuri, at another plant of Mahindras.
I came back to Mumbai on Friday night, relaxed and relieved, with batteries charged for the upcoming weekend!

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