Day 4 - waterworld

For Thursday the plan was to go to the summer house of the Bantwal family. As the travel agent told me the day before to pay in cash I decided to go to a bank to get some money and meet the others later for lunch when we got picked up. So here is the neardy deal:

You need to get 24.000 Rupees. The cash machine only has notes of 100 Rupees and gives a maximum of 40 notes per transaction. Inserting your card into the machine takes 10 seconds, getting it out 7 seconds. Hitting of a key takes about 1 second and you have to go through a menu of 4 levels to get to the screen where you can enter the amount and your PIN, which has 4 digits. The machine needs 25 seconds to validate your entries and needs another 15 seconds to count the money and open the slot where you can take it. How long do you need to realize you will be late for lunch?

So in the end it took me about 20 embarrassing minutes at the cash machine to get the money. The embarrassing part was the queue behind me who probably still are puzzled what this Gori did there for 20 minutes.

Here is a photo of my trip with a bag full of cash through the city. Notice the sign for the “SUN Shoppe” opposite good luck hotel on f.c. road? The city was full of painted signs for this shop, but unfortunately I did not make it to shop itself. Still – the money spent on the paint was probably worth it as I noticed it a million times while going through the city.



I also passed by the world famous Ruby Hall Clinic, where the preetiest Indian girl was born not so long ago.



So anyway I picked up the flight tickets and the confirmation for the hotels and headed to Preetis place. I have forgotten to take photos of her doggies but they were a sight. One of them was completely sweet and the other one totally pretty aggressive. Needless to say I spent most of the time with the non-aggressive one.

After lunch Preeti, her middle sister Prattiti and I headed back to pick up the others in a van. As a silent sign of protest against the brutally strict driver license exam people in Germany I am posting the following picture of some friendly Indian citizens waiting for a green light upside down. If the world was a fair place, Preetis examiner would be brought to India and forced to drive through Pune with that van showing Preeti how to properly keep distance to other vehicles on the road. Shame on you, German TÜV-approved driver license examiners!!!



We met the others in the Prabhat road residence and headed to the country house. Preeti, Blanca and Pratitti were sitting in the front, Maike, Estelle and Simone in the back; Christian, Eugenio, me and the luggage for 2 days in the very back. Preeti was driving. This was Blanca’s view in the car.



We drove for a while out of the city and finally arrived at splendour country – a kind of water park with a magnificent swimming pool and nobody around. This is us totally excited at the entrance gate (well, most of us anyway):



We clad our luxury – bodies in silk swimming gear and headed for the pool. Too late did we notice the sharks and piranhas around so the girls jumped high to flee from the sharp teeth of death… We have all survived by the way.



We finally arrived at the summer residence of the Bantwal family. Here is a catalogue photo of it from a well-known travel magazine:



The house was simply fantastic. Two big bedrooms on the ground floor, each with a separate bathroom, separated by the stairs cutting into the building running up to the first floor – a magnificent room with windows on each side and surrounded by a balcony from all sides.



In the middle the stairs and parallel to them a kitchen.



There was also a beautiful garden full of exotic plants right next to the building. Of course we got a tour by the proud owner of the place through the gardens.



Here is the picture of the day:



Almost too late did we realize we were missing the most crucial part of the sunset – here is a photo proving we have witnessed it in the end:



We spent the rest of the evening practicing for our big dance performance Friday night and handing out presents to our hosts.



Good night everybody!

Here are the pictures of Day 4