While traveling to and from Pondicherry I stopped in other Indian cities to meet with old friends.
In Hyderabad, Sindhu picked me up at the airport and drove me to her new place. Later in the afternoon, we visited her office and then had a snack at Roast. We decided to go Shilparamam - a crafts village and bazaar. There, I got a new bedspread and cushion covers that I will use on my couch. We wandered the different alleys of stalls and looked at different crafts. There were not a lot of visitors and it seemed that there had not been all day as my purchase was the first for the stall owner.
Afterwards, we went for dinner at a nice Japanese restaurant and Sindhu had fish sushi for the first time in Hyderabad.
The next morning, Sindhu brings me back to the airport and I catch my small plane to Pondicherry.
After a couple of days in Pondi, I left the city by train as there were no flights (I searched and checked for over a month - but it seemed as service had suddenly stopped). To experience something new, I opted for 1st class AC - which meant a ladies compartment with door and four couchettes instead of 3rd AC with open wagon and 6 couchettes plus two on the side.
After more than 10 hours, the train arrived in Bangalore where I took an auto rickshaw to get to Sharjeel's place. I met his son and wife and then we went for breakfast and juice in the city. It was great to catch up on each other's life and what we know about the different people from the Congress Committee we worked with nearly 20 years ago. A couple of hours later I caught an Uber to the airport to travel back to Jaipur.
Sankalp, Sharjeel, Sindhu and I met first in 2005 when we were all part of the Congress Committee of AIESEC's International Congress in Agra, India. A story of mine about that time made it to AIESEC's 75 Years Storybook: https://blog.aiesec.org/aiesec-storybook/.
I had less than 24h in Jaipur - just enough time to pack the luggage and get a ticket for the bus to Delhi/ Gurgaon. Thanks to Sankalp I got a decent Volvo seater bus. Otherwise I would have gone for the Bharat Benz which would have been a seater and sleeper bus combined. The bus was punctual and stopped once on the way where I could check out the alternative.
In Gurgaon, I got off at IFFCO Chowk, basically under a flyover bridge in the middle of the road. Hard to find if you want to pick up someone there as there are so many roads parallel and it's not easy to get from one to the other. In the end, I took a taxi to a hotel where I met my colleague Tabish. He safeguarded my laptop for the past weeks and handed it back and we had a great Italian dinner at the restaurant.
Around 10 pm I finally headed to the airport where I had to repack my luggage and pretend it was much lighter than it was. After I got rid off the suitcase at check-in and passed immigration and security check, I tried to spend my remaining cash. So I bought some perfume in duty free, Indian sweets for the colleagues back home and another four books. I weighed my luggage later at home - I returned with 45 kg.
The flight was uneventful and even though I got the seat I wanted, sleeping was not easy. Back in Munich, I took a Miles car and drove home.
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