India

I had the opportunity to go to India for two weeks at the beginning of this month. The trip was through my MBA program at Carlson and also happened to be the last class for getting my MBA degree completed. We started out with a week in Delhi which is the capital of India, it took a few days to recover from the long flight (I think it was 18 hours total travel time) and while we were there we visited companies that do business over there; Ameriprise, Wal-Mart, several Indian government agencies, a startup company, United Health Group and many others. Delhi is a city of about 17 million, there are literally people everywhere, one night when we left a visit at peak rush hour it took us 2 ½ hours to go a little over 7 miles. Delhi’s traffic in general is not too bad due to a lot of roundabouts that the British built.


Over the weekend we took a trip to Agra which is where the Taj Mahal is. If you are ever in India and have the opportunity to go see it, I would highly recommend it. It is really unbelievable to see in person. Although it was a 6 hour bus ride over 200km to get there (one way) it was still one of the highlights on the trip. A member of our class that is from Agra arranged the whole trip and it was awesome, we also got to see the Agra fort which is just down the river from the Taj.


Back in Delhi on Sunday we went to go see Aksradam (sp?) Temple which was really amazing as well and I would recommend going to see that too. It is more modern than the Taj, but the carvings and everything are just insane.

We then flew to Bangalore for the last week of our trip and spent the week again visiting companies and sightseeing. Some of the companies we visited included: Target (of course the best of the trip!), Sony, Lenovo, Infosys and a bunch of Indian companies. In Bangalore I also got to meet up with a friend of mine from a project at work. He had come to the US back in the summer for the project I was working on and he is from Bangalore. We were able to get together a few nights and go out to eat and do some shopping, it was great! Bangalore traffic is horrible, they do not have the same system as Delhi and sometimes you would sit at lights for what seemed like 20 minutes, although it probably wasn’t really that long. It is a city of 8 million and they do not have a metro, although that is under construction, so when any of you visit it should be better.


The trip back was even longer (total travel of 24+ hours) as I missed a connecting flight in Newark on the way home and had to spend an extra night in Chicago before getting home on the 16th. But overall it was an amazing trip.

Most frequently asked questions about my trip and the answers:

· How was the food, especially the Indian food? It was good and I was very lucky to not develop any stomach issues while I was over there. We went out to four large group Indian dinners that were all really amazing. They do chicken a lot of different ways, have good breads, rice and desserts.

· What was it like? For those that have been to Mexico, very similar buildings and shopping, just bigger and a LOT more people.

· Would you ever go back? Yeah I think I would eventually, would be neat to bring the family and show them what I saw and all the stuff that I missed.

· Are everyone’s jobs eventually going to move to India? Yes (just kidding, I have no idea,) they do a lot of things well, but some things transfer easier than others

· Are there really cows everywhere? Yes, they are everywhere. Even saw one in a convenience store, literally in the store, he must have been shopping.

· Do they have McDonalds/American food there? Yes. There was a McD’s close to our first hotel that we frequented. Although they have no beef, the Big Mac is a King Burger (or something similar) that is either veggie burger or some type of chicken. We also went to KFC and Subway a few times.

· What is the money? It is called the Rupee, and the exchange rate is something like $1=50 rupees, you felt like you had a lot of money because of the large bills.