IDT Part Five

The next stop on our final leg of the IDT was in Pune, a large city just southeast of Mumbai. We arrived on a Sunday and spent two overnights in town. This gave us the chance to book into a decent hotel a sleep in a real bed for a couple of nights. As I was still getting over my food poisoning from Ahmednagar, I spent most of that Sunday in bed watching TV in the hotel. The next morning, we took a tuk-tuk back to the station to meet our bus. All of the foreign officers were slated to visit the National Defence Academy (NDA). On the way, our bus ran out of fuel and we waited for 15 minutes at an intersection for a new bus.

Me, Ashish (Nepal), Ali (Oman), Chris (Singapre) and Ruslan (Ukraine) wait for the bus.

NDA turned out to be a pretty impressive place, and it was by far the nicest military facility I've seen in India. We received an extensive tour of the grounds and got some insight into an Indian military cadet's daily life.

Foreign officer group photo in front of the main administrative building.

View of the NDA grounds.

After two days in Pune, we had another 24 hours of train riding before reaching our final destination for the trip, Bangalore. We arrived in Bangalore early in the morning and loaded the buses for one last visit, this time to the Indian technological consulting company Infosys. The Infosys campus turned out to be a very modern complex that wouldn't have been out of place in a western industrial park.

Waiting in the Infosys lobby for our tour to begin.

After the tour, we were cut loose for one afternoon in Bangalore before heading back to the train. We took this opportunity in a big city to eat well and do some shopping. We stopped off for Happy Hour and dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. Though I usually don't like Hard Rocks (except the Vegas casino), this place had one of the few real burgers in all of India.

With Chris in front of the Hard Rock.

Happy hour: Ali, Mohammed, Jose, Jeff, Tim, Chris and me

That night we boarded the train one final time before heading home to Wellington. I certainly won't miss the accomodations on board...the bathrooms, the bad food, the tiny bunks...

I will say, however, that train travel is a real part of Indian culture and the view from the door of the train as India passes by you should be an ingredient in anyone's Indian adventure.

Just watch out for the salmonella...