Sorry about the post heading. However, it’s absolutely not for shock value (well, mostly not) as you’ll read later in this post. I know it’s been a while since my last post but the reason should be self explanatory. I’ve broken this one into easily digestible little snacks that cover each topic. Enjoy!
Last week at the Gurgaon office
Last week, we successfully completed 1 day of planning and 4 days worth of training here in our India office. I’ve met the entire team and I’ve gotten to spend some quality time with many of them. We have a lot of work to do to ensure smooth operations between the US and India teams but I’m very optimistic. We’ll make as much progress as possible today and tomorrow before I head back to the States.
Fine Dining
Tuesday evening the GM of our India facility took me to dinner at an excellent Chinese restaurant whose name escapes me. The food, service and environment were all outstanding and the menu was pretty reasonably priced. I don’t know why but initially it struck me as odd to have traveled to India only to be taken out for Chinese food. However, I quickly changed my mind when I took my first bite of our pan-seared dim sum appetizer. I wonder if the Indian food in China is equally good?
Thursday evening, two directors and another colleague took me to an Indian restaurant called Park Balluchi. I have mixed emotions about this experience. The food was fantastic, as was the service. Unfortunately, Thursday morning I got hit with a severe case of Montezuma’s revenge (read: diarrhea) – more on that later in this post. Suffice to say, my stomach was in no condition to accept ANY food, much less the spicy, complex flavors of Indian cuisine. I tried a very little bit of everything they put in front of me and it was simultaneously delicious and nauseating. In spite of my assurances to my hosts that the food was really wonderful, I’m fairly certain they were disappointed that I didn’t eat more.
Other than the two nights on the town described above, I generally ate at either the hotel restaurant (breakfast and dinner) or in the office (catered lunch). Neither offered anything worth writing about so I’ll spare you any unnecessary verbiage about them. However, there was one other meal worth mentioning. On our way back from Agra to Delhi (following our trip to see the Taj Mahal – more on that below), we passed a McDonald’s and decided that we would never forgive ourselves if we didn’t sample some McIndian food. My colleague, Mike, and I were immediately shocked to find that not only was there no beef of any kind available on the menu (we expected this) but – even worse – none of the traditional non-beef McDonald’s classics were to be found. That’s right, no Chicken McNuggets, no McChicken Sandwich and no McRib. Had they not sold McDonald’s French Fries and Soft Serve, I would have forced them to take down the golden arches right then and there. Alas, we sorted through the menu before us and having considered items like the following…
- McVeggie Burger – strictly vegetarian
- McVeg Surprise – presumably, same as above only more “surprising”
- McChicken Burger – how do you even put those two words together?
- McAloo Tiki Burger – not sure, won’t venture a guess
- Veg Pizza McPuff – I’m not making this stuff up
…we decided on the only thing that closely resembled an American McDonald’s classic: the Chicken Maharaja Mac. Oh yeah! Top, bottom and middle bun? Check. Cheese? Check? Lettue, tomato, onion and special sauce? Check. Two all-beef patties? Of course not. Instead: two mushy, curry flavored chicken-like patties. D’oh! So close. I’m sure that McDonald’s conducted extensive market research and taste tests when putting that menu together because, hey, that’s what McDonald’s does. Let me say this for the record: McDonald’s, conduct more tests! Thank heaven that their fries were the same otherwise I might have starved.
Agra, India: The Taj Mahal and Agra Fort
Saturday afternoon, Mike and I drove four hours from Delhi to Agra and checked into a very nice hotel. Much nicer, in fact, than our hotel in Delhi. After settling in, we had dinner in the hotel restaurant which – again – was so much nicer than our current hotel’s restaurant. Sunday morning, we woke up, ate breakfast (or Mike did anyway, Montezuma was still reeking his vengeance on me), checked out and drove to the Taj Mahal. Rather than bore you with a written description of our tour and the experience, I’ll simply say this: it was awesome! Now I’ll let some of the photos speak for themselves (the full set is on Flickr).
When we finished at the Taj, we drove over to Agra Fort and took a quick tour of it as well. The fort is over 2 miles in circumference but only 25% of that is open to tourists. Here are a few photos of it.
That fort had two moats. The outer moat was a water moat (though it’s dry now) which was once filled with crocodiles and the inner moat was a dry moat (still dry now) which was once filled with tigers and other anti-personnel creatures. How cool is that? I want two moats. Hell, I’d be happy with just one moat…or a tiger.
Diarrhea and a quest for the cure
Alright, we’ll keep this part short and sweet for those of you who are faint of heart…or stomach. Thursday morning I woke up with a bad case of “you know what.” I had packed a crap-load (pun intended) of Imodium AD so I took some, as directed. Thursday night we had the aforementioned dinner at Park Balluchi and I think that made things worse because Thursday night and Friday morning were pretty rough. By Friday evening, I was feeling a little better and I attributed that to the Imodium. Saturday we drove all the way to Agra with no issues and had dinner in the restaurant. So far so good, right? Wrong! Sunday morning around 3:00 AM, I woke up and never went back to sleep. I was in the bathroom about every half-hour until I had to head down to meet Mike for breakfast and checkout. I decided that enough was enough and the Imodium wasn’t cutting it so I took the first Azithromycin in the Z-pack that had been prescribed for just such an occasion. Between not eating anything for most of the day and the antibiotics, Sunday turned out to be an uneventful day as far as my bowels were concerned. I took the second of the Z-pack this morning and have felt fine all day. Tomorrow I’ll take the last of the antibiotics and – God willing – I’ll have gotten past that misery.
And finally…
I’ll be headed back to the good ole’ USA tomorrow night (or Wednesday morning, I suppose) at 12:15 AM. I’ll be back home in time for lunch on Wednesday. I think I might have a burger. My wife is picking me up at the airport and I can’t wait to see her. Hey baby, I’m coming home!
Filed under: Food and Drink, Musings, Travel
