Pune, Day 11

The only events of note on Saturday were the wedding reception, and Indian our first trip to the mecca that is Indian MacDonald’s. First, McDonalds:

They have more veggie options than meat options on the menu!!! I was able to order my first burger ever!! Woooooo. (At a fast food place I mean). They have: Veggie Burger, Paneer Wrap, Aloo McTikki, Salad Burger, and my personal favorite, shake shake fries, which are normal fries that come with a packet of seasoning and a bag and you dump both in the bag and do what the name suggests.

Onward to the wedding reception

Since Ani is from Pune the reception was held there, and had many of the same people from the ceremony, but also tons of new faces and TONS of good food, more my style because it is central India, I wasn’t too much a fan of all the rice in the south. Unfortunately, or fortunately, my Kurta had been sent to the washers to be ironed so we realized I had nothing to wear at about 5 pm when we were leaving at 6. Rahul’s mom lent me a GORGEOUS sari, seriously the most beautiful thing I have ever worn. It was a pinkish color and had hand embroidered beads all along the borders, I shudder to think what it was worth, I spent most of the night paranoid I was going to spill coffee or curry on it


The girls in our beautiful Saris

Extended family

Trying to recreate the Benny Lava pose

Family picture with the Venkits

Food Coach!!! This guy was amazing, he made sure to pop up and explain the food every time something new was offered


Knockout - Strong Beer, and a sari, I'm classy

All of the younger crew were there again: Anoop, Sarah, Ani, Rishee, Rahul and us, and of course there were endless jokes about anoop’s height as always, and a Indian wobble head circle game where you had to pass on the Indian head wobble - If you don’t know what I’m talking about YouTube Indian head wobble. The next morning we were awakened to rahul telling us the saris we wore last night were presents from his mom, which is one of the nicest and most memory filled presents anyone has ever given me, and I’m pretty sure that it is now the most expensive garment I own. After breaky we went to laxmi road, the older and even more hectic (if that is even possible) part of town, and did some more shopping and got our henna done. In the evening we went to Verun’s Xmas concert, which was awesome and put us in the mood for Xmas, which none of us were felling before.

On the way home rahul made a stop at fantasy juice bar, an institution in Pune. From the way he was talking we were expecting to see a shinny restaurant, but instead its little tiny shack on the side of the road and you don’t even get out of the car. The smoothies were Derrricious, but I don’t really see how he and his friends could have hung out there during high school, I guess it would be like us hanging out in the Safeway parking lot.

Pune, Day 10 of the Trip

After our seventh and last overnight train, we arrived in Pune, the birthplace of the illustrious Rahul sexy party, Sexy party 1.5, Too Sexy party, and Sexy Road Trip. Immediately when we got to the house rahul’s parents made us feel at home, I don’t know the last time I have met two such welcoming-genuinely-nice-amazing-people, (three counting his granny). Before we entered the house she blessed us with the sacred flame (a candle) and dotted some oil on our foreheads, which I think was to ward bad things away.

Mostly it was amazing to be able to unpack for a few days, do laundry etc, all the things we had been missing traveling nonstop for the past 10 days. The Ayee made a wonderful lunch for us all, and Gardiner and I, determined to learn how to cook Indian food, actually took notes and got to help make Rotti. Unfortunately our rotti making skills were not up to par, and after a few each we were replaced by her 13 year old daughter, who made five in the time it took us to make 1.

Verun and Rahul making noodles

After lunch we drove out to the country club and swam, despite it being really cold. The boys swam for much longer and we made up all sorts of competitions for them, like water running, and swimming without legs. Steffen actually won the water running contest, I think it has to be the first athletic event he has ever won in his life – hopefully for him it will be a new event in the Olympics soon.

After swimming we went back to Anoop’s farmhouse, which was really cool, and had a really yummy sounding fruit garden with mangos, papayas, and lemons; we obviously put papaya there….. We had our first Bollywood experience after dinner, watching Om Shanti Om, a big movie a few years ago. I thought it was so awesome and stayed up to watch all three and a half hours of it – I really wish we hadn’t lost all of our bollywood DVDs.

Snoop-Anoop's motorcycle light was only a headlamp

Famous restaurant in Pune where everyone knew Rahul and we ate a "snack" that tasted kind of like sweet nachos


Eggs are tricky, they take much effort and coordination....another favorite slogan was: "Anytime is egg time"

Hampi, Day 9 of trip

Did our 6th overnight train ride, this time to Hampi, which is between Bangalore and Pune. Hampi is known for its ruins, and every year there is a pilgrimage to the nearby river, which we were lucky enough to get to see.

One of the main attractions were supposed to be these ‘singing columns’ that when you hit them played whatever your heart desired. After walking around in pursuit of these for a while we finally were pointed in the direction that they supposedly were, only to find out that it was kind of bull. Some people were saying they could hear musical noises coming from them, but to me it just sounded like the noise every stone column makes when you knock on it.




The main temple complex was really cool, and definitely looked angkorian / Mayan. We spent most of our time posing for photos with the countless people who mobbed us to be in their pictures – it was almost like a photo shoot.



After watching the pilgrims bathing for a while we went to a restaurant called mango tree and stuffed our faces again, which seems to be the theme of this trip to India.






The restaurant was cool because it was on the river and they had pictures of what it looks like in the rainy season when the water level rises about 40 feet it looks like, its pretty hard to believe there is that much of a difference just from rain.

The food was SOO..good.. made snoop-anoop go crazy

Other pictures from Hampi:

Bangalore, Day 7 & 8 of Trip

Our plan was to arrive in the hotel in Bangalore in our sumo suits to greet Rahul before the wedding, which we did, but only after standing around in the lobby for a good thirty minutes waiting for him to show up; we were such a novelty the staff was calling people in off the street to come look at us.

After our sumo ambush we only had a few hours before the beginning of the wedding and needed to buy appropriate clothes so we rushed off to Fabindia, which apparently is the place to buy stylish things of the like. Like any guy, Rahul grossly underestimated the amount of time it takes girls to make a decision about an outfit, especially for a wedding, so we ended up being really crunched for time.

The wedding was in some ways very much like what I had pictured an Indian wedding being like, and in some ways very different. Today was only the first part of the wedding, but the whole thing was very similar, so I will describe it once for the whole time.

For starters, it is forbidden to dance in Bangalore, so that kind of gives you an overall impression of the wedding right there; it was heavy on tradition and light on party. It was really cool seeing all of the traditional aspects I had always read about, such as circling the sacred fire seven times, and the marigold canopy people are supposed to be married under, but by the time the second hour of classical music was winding down, all of Rahul’s friends were feverently apologizing to us for the boringness of the wedding.







What sets Indian weddings apart from the rest is the everyone-is-family feeling that is lacking at most western weddings. Although we had absolutely no connection to the bride and groom, and had never met them before, we were included in everything, and not just because we were foreigners, but because everyone was included. People went out of their way to make sure we felt at home – we even had a food coach: one of the cousins of the bride came over to us every time food was served and explained to us what everything was. Despite this we were drinking our soup the wrong way, and at the end of the meal two little old ladies came over to instruct us on the proper way to slurp soup from your palm. The food was indeed one of the highlights of the wedding, that and having a bigger room than the bride and groom in the hotel for some reason.


South Indian Food is very different from northern food in that it is rice based, not wheat based, and it is eaten almost entirely with your hands. Never use your left hand to raise food to your mouth, since traditionally that is your “dirty” hand. The food was served on a banana leaf and consists mainly of rice, three or four main curries, a few chutneys, soups, and ‘salad’, which was basically veggie raita. Throughout the entire wedding we were stuffed with food by men carrying pails of the curry around the tables. They never took no for an answer on second or thirds, by fourths you could sometimes convince them that you were full. Our favorite looked like an Indian Harry Carey and was always popping up right when we thought we had at last cleaned our plates to delightedly pile on more food.


Since there was obviously little revelry at the wedding itself (the bride and groom spent three quarters of the time outside – bad sign), all the young people bought cases of Kingfisher and had a party afterward in our room since it was the biggest. After a few beers rishi was persuaded to read his speech for the wedding to Ani, who was there – even for us who didn’t know ani it made us laugh till we cried. At the end of the night we spent a good thirty minutes trying to take in-air pictures jumping on the bed, much to the chagrin of the “boring couple”.

Agra, Day 6 of the Trip

We arrived in Agra at 10 am and first went to go see the fort, which is right next to the train station. For me this was not that cool architecture, except for a mosque inside which was kind of cool. There were however amazing views of the taj. Once you look at it from a distance you realize that Disney completely ripped it off for Aladdin.



After doing a speedy tour of the fort we took a rickshaw to the main tourist area inside the walls of the old city. I had to use the overseas call to try and change my flight to after NYE, and after I had been on hold for 15 minutes and almost gotten everything sorted the phone started making fax noises and I had to hang up. Once I told the guy I wasn’t going to pay for the call because his phone was crap and I had to start over again he told me that the sound I heard must have been the hold music, which it obviously wasn’t and that it was my fault I had hung up, his phone was fine. We obviously got into a huge fight since him telling me I had confused hold music with a fax noise was utter bullshit and he wouldn’t back down from this claim. Even with Gardiner and Steffen backing me he wouldn’t admit his phone had messed up – it was ridiculous.

We were all pretty pissed off, especially me, so we went to a rooftop café with view of the Taj to calm our nerves. The view was very choice and went a long way to making me forget the incident. We also dressed up in our sumo suits and took pictures – people down below in the town were coming out of their houses to stare and point at us. . Once the waiters saw how much fun we were having they wanted to join in, so we let them have their sumo moment as well.


View from our restaurant

The Taj was incredible, so much so it is impossible to describe and you will have no idea what I am talking about unless you go to actually see it. I would say it was even more awe inspiring for me than Angkor. The whole thing is so white, and so much bigger than I ever imagined it would be.


The symmetry is also striking, down to the trees that are planted around the main building.
The only unsymetrical thing in the whole compound is the placement of the two coffins. Since he was planning on building his own Taj across the river from his wife, there was only room for one coffin in the symmetrical layout of the interior.

Location across the river where his tomb was to be constructed

Once he was added after his death his placement beside her is the only thing that throws off the symmetry of the entire compound.

We took a ton of pictures on the way out, mainly of Indians posing, but also some of ourselves, and we jumped into a bunch of random peoples photos, which they thought was very funny.



This guy was trying to recreate the picture that I am doing above, but little known to him all of his friends were doing this, he couldn't figure out why we were taking pictures of him but finally he turned around and realized it.