My motivation to come to India during this trip was not mainly its great temples, cool hill stations or beautiful national parks. It was to visit the people that I met while studying at Management Development Institute (MDI) in 2006 and 2007.
And it felt a bit like coming home. Even though Gurgaon, that high-tech suburb south of Delhi where MDI has its campus, has changed completely in the last 5 years. Back then there were only rusty busses with open windows that bumped around for hours to get to downtown Delhi. Today it has an awesome metro system and only 40 mins after boarding at New Delhi railway station we zoomed along the elevated tracks above MG road looking over the dozens of new malls, hotels and apartment blocks. Akshay picked us up from the station and we had lunch at Ambience Mall, one of those new developments in Gurgaon and with 1km shopping on each floor the biggest mall in India. It is really comforting to feel lasting friendship, even after five long years when everybody did his own thing. We stayed for a week to make time to hang out together, meet Rahul with Divya and their little boy, Gajendra and his wife, Arun and even our prof Asha at MDI. We prepared some Swabian Spätzle and enjoyed Akshay’s steamed Malayalam Putu. Especially interesting to hear how he leads ‚Nouveau Solutions‘, the company he founded.
On our way to Ayesha and Raj down in Goa we made a short stop at Ranthambhore National Park in Rajasthan, where we unsuccessfully tried to spot tigers. It was still a great wildlife experience with an abundance of wild peacocks in beautiful valleys, lots of deer and gazelles, kingfishers, monkeys and even crocodiles.
And after a long train journey we had another warm welcome from the Sasikumar family in Panjim. The four of us roamed around Goa on their motorbikes and enjoyed the empty beaches on the last days before the monsoon started. Thanks again, guys – not only for bailing us out from some corrupt police officer.
Back in Mumbai we got a slot in the busy schedules of Kinshuk, now working in a financing company and Vincent, who now works as India representative for Louis XIII, a French cognac where one bottle is more expensive than a Tata nano. They took us to this bar near Mumbai’s Chowpatti beach, an urban oasis that really reminded us of Tel Aviv – not only because of the Mediterranean platter we had.
So besides the few sights we visited in India this time, it was great to catch up with some old friends. Let’s stay in touch!
