My May was an extremely busy month for travel. After spending the first 2 weeks on vacation in United Kingdom, I stayed a week in Hong Kong and was off again, this time for a work trip to Pune, India.
I had been to Pune before, so I was excited for the delicious food. Unlike last time, I didn’t have to fly to Mumbai and then take a 4-hour scary road trip to Pune.
I took 2 flights – one to Delhi, then a connecting flight to Pune. But I faced a different problem there – a long queue at the immigration. By the time I got out, I was running late for my connecting flight. One guy helped me out by literally running me through all the next steps and get me to my plane just in time. I gave him 100 HKD for his effort because I didn’t have any Indian rupees on hand.
The Hotel
When I landed in Pune, I met up with my bosses Sandra and Evelyn who had flown in from Singapore, and we all rode a car that drove us to our hotel, a lovely 3-bedroom suite at Marriott. We could have taken individual rooms but this turned out to be a nicer option because we had a large living room, dining room, and kitchen area with a washing machine and dryer, and it was cheaper than separate rooms.
Sandra and Evelyn are at MD at director level, but they are incredibly down-to-earth people. Sandra even insisted that I take the master bedroom which came with its own bathroom with bathtub. I fell in love with the scent of the toiletries and have been trying to buy them online, to no avail.
We had free breakfast buffet every morning at the hotel restaurant, and they had loads of food options, including pratas that you could order and they would make for you.
The servers were also very good at remembering you and your choice of drink, they would ask you the next morning if you still wanted the same. The service is really good in Pune, actually, and this was what I remembered from my last trip as well.
The Funny Lift Incidents
Another difference compared to my last visit was that this time we had a dedicated car for hire that we could use, instead of booking Ubers. This was good so we did not need to have to claim back all those receipts.
The traffic in Pune is bad, kind of like in Manila. The surroundings also had some similarities to Manila, like variety stores and stray dogs. Pune had stray cows, though.
We were in Pune for 4 nights, and our colleagues were very warm and welcoming, though a bit shy on the first day. There was one funny incident on our first day when we visitors got into a lift with plenty of room to spare, but the more junior local team members did not get in with us.
Sandra was so confused about this, but I guessed that maybe they were just either respecting us by giving us space or they were just intimidated by us. I reminded her that she is a big boss, after all.
This wouldn’t be the last funny incident we could encounter in a lift.
Gaurav brought us around to many people’s offices to introduce us to them. One of those people was Prasad. Sandra spoke to him about previous dealings they had, but she realized from his facial expression that he had no idea what she was talking about. Turns out she had been thinking about a different Prasad.
The next day, when she, Evelyn, and I were in a lift on the way up to a restaurant for dinner, someone jumped in with us. She recognized his face, and said profusely, “Prasad, I am so sorry about yesterday! When I spoke to you, I thought you were the other Prasad!”
Evelyn and I tried to interrupt her, but were laughing too hard. I finally managed to say, “Mahesh, we are so sorry, we’re still jetlagged.”
Yup, it was not Prasad again! 🤣
The Food
On our first night we had arrived late, so we just had dinner at an Italian restaurant near the hotel on our own. On the second night, we planned a dinner with the whole team.
But before that, Gaurav brought us to a supermarket which sold mangoes, because Evelyn had asked if her favourite Alphonso mangoes were in season, and they happened to be. We also bought some of Gaurav’s other favourite Kesar mangoes.
We got to try them the next morning at the hotel. We asked a server to cut it up for us and put a different mango on each plate so we could differentiate. They did that but forgot which plate had which. 😅 Evelyn managed to figure out which one was the Alphonso, and we all agreed that it does taste very good. It has a rich mango taste, like several mangoes had been squeezed into one.
The restaurant we booked was just a short walk away from the supermarket. It had a nice ambiance and delicious food. We all had fun eating and chatting with each other. This made everyone less shy by the next day, and we got them to relax a bit more when we asked everyone to tell us a fun fact about themselves.
After that, they were more comfortable getting into the lift with us and even bringing us to the food court and having lunch with us. Thank goodness they were there, because it was kind of difficult to navigate the food court without their help!
The next night, we had dinner with the local finance management team. They brought us to a gorgeous restaurant called Chaurahe Ke Paar, which someone said translated to “after the crossroads” (or something like that, I may be misremembering). I thought it sounded kind of poetic.
The food was once again very good, and after we had a ton of food, someone asked what we wanted for mains. “Are you joking?” we asked. We thought those had been mains! Turns out they were appetizers. We were so full already.
We did order dessert, though, because there’s always space for that – mango cheesecakes!
The entire night, we had been laughing very hard about a mango joke. When we had been in the supermarket the previous day, I had asked Gaurav to explain the difference between Alphonso and Kesar mangoes for me on camera. We joked about how that video could go viral and Gaurav would be known as Mango G. And somehow this got extended to more jokes.
I know, it doesn’t sound funny now, it’s a you had to have been there kind of joke, I think. I had literal tears in my eyes. Whoever thinks Finance folks are very serious people who don’t know how to laugh and have a good time should have seen us that night.
On our last day, the team surprised us by getting us the more delicious mango cheesecakes, because Gaurav said the ones from last night were not that good. We were even more surprised when Gaurav – I mean, Mango G – presented us with one scarf each, chosen by his wife. Such great hospitality!
Then it was time to pack up our things at the hotel and head to the airport. We had gotten emails about getting an upgrade to business class for a small amount, so we decided to get it because Vistara airline’s business class has fully reclining seats and our flight was at 2am and we badly needed sleep.
I’m glad we did, because our flight was delayed! The airport was very small and didn’t even have any cafes, just a food kiosk.
When we got to the plane, I was very excited because the last time I was in business class was 2006, also for work. Also this was the first time I experienced a fully reclining seat on a plane. It was so comfy that I managed to sleep almost the entire way from Pune to Singapore. Oh yes, my flight back to Hong Kong was through a stopover in Singapore this time, because there was an option for it.
Overall, that was a fun and memorable yet honestly exhausting trip where I ate and laughed and worked too much. But I’m glad I had the opportunity.
Leave a Reply