My experience in India and tips

Thar Desert near Jaisalmer 

Disclaimer: I am going to express what I felt in India, my impressions during the trip and about the people I crossed with. Those opinions are framed within the circumstances I lived. I don't want to hurt nor offend anyone. 

In simple terms I summarize my trip to India like this:

* India is horrible, but the trip to India is a life-experience.

* One two three: NOTHING FREE, four five six: NOTHING FIXED: seven eight nine: INDIA SUPER FINE.

In India there are unique sights, just that the operative cost to get there is quite high (infinite noise, infinite dirt, cheating all the time, lies everywhere). Therefore you must have the right mindset in order to enjoy the trip.

The first 10 days of my trip were very tough, mentally I was not well prepared for India nor for the kind of people I met (mainly cheaters and liars who destroyed my trip). I got a breaking point in Delhi, where I changed my attitude and my plan, which was quite ambitious at the beginning. Those changes helped me to enjoy the trip better and to learn many things about myself that I didnt know before:

• I am very strict
• I can be aggressive while negotiating (at least with Indians that you know they are cheating you all the time)
• Although I am a loner, I am not as loner as I though I was.

In India your mind boundaries move forward, your tolerance increases to unexpected levels. All that makes you know yourself better and that is why I feel the trip to India is a life-experience.

My tips for those going to India

• Carry toilet paper with you all the time
• Get a SIM card as soon as you get there and register yourself into a web platform to book the trains yourself
• DO NOT TRUST travel agents (yea yea, not all of them are bad. but the majority of those I crossed with were.)
• book the trains yourself, either through the web platform (for which you need an Indian number to log on), or on the train stations (the main stations have an office for foreigners)
• Eat in the places locals eat 
• Don't let your self believe people are nice because they smile to you, or because they ask you where are you from or what is your name. Usually they want something out of you (to ask you for money, to buy them something, to drag you into their shop, etc), it's not just that they want to be nice with you. Believe me!, you are not the first nor the last tourist for them, you are not special for them!
• Carry a sheet for the bed and for some trains, or a thin sleeping bag
• Learn how to shake the head as they do, it is very useful during negotiations.

I recommend people to go to India, just go there expecting the worst and your shock might not be that hard. Dont expect anything to work smooth, most probably it wont. Still the trip is worthwhile to be done, you might meet good people, you'll see great places and interact with a culture of thousands of years. 

Public Commitment

I am somewhere between the second and fifth steps of the construction of my MSc's dissertation.

Public commitment is one of the best ways to walk below the gallows and put the rope on the neck. I am sharing my commitment to reach steps 5 and 6 soon. The planned milestones are the following:

1) Send invitation letter to experts: 11th of February (within two weeks) [ Done Between February and March]
2) Send 1st-round survey: 18th of March  [Done Between March and April]
3) Send 2nd-round survey: 15th of April [Done Between April and May]
4) Send 3rd-round survey (if needed): 13th of May [Not needed]
5) Send draft to revision: 21st of June (high priority) [Done a month later on July 24th]
6) Expected closing date: 23rd of August  [Done August 20th]
7) Delivery deadline: 3rd of September

I realize I owe a post about what is my dissertation about. That shall come soon :)
[Update: August 20th. End of the dissertation]

The least enjoyed book lately

 "The Steve Jobs Way, iLeadership for a new generation" has been the least enjoyed book I have read in the last years.

With this I dont mean that the book itself is bad. It's just that it was a book that took me more than one year to read, reading 2, 3 pages before falling asleep each night. I stopped reading it a couple of time to read other books, hence I couldnt appreciate it as a whole. However I think it's an interesting book and more for those lovers of Steve Jobs or Apple.

The following are the few highlights I made on the book:

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the greatest things about finding good people is that they become your best recruiters. They are the people most likely to know others who have the same values and sense of style that you and they themselves do. A good “Pirate” generally has a friend or relative who is just as good. Steve used to say to me that “great engineers are a huge multiplier.”

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“What matters isn’t what happens to you in life. What really matters is how you react to it.”

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Thoreau said, “Simplification of means and elevation of ends is the goal.”

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“I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do,”

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To have true innovation, you have to build a culture to support it.

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Success can be self-defeating, if it leads you into the rut of repeating yourself. Too often we cannot envision a different world because we’ve gotten into the habit of looking at our world with the mind-set of what has worked before.

Facts about my trip to India

My trip to India was a whole life experience. I'll need several posts to develop and digest it, this one is the easiest one: the facts.

The itinerary and the nights is each place:

Mumbai - Udaipur(1) - Jaisalmer(2) - Deshnok(0) - Amritsar(2) - Chandigarh(2) - Delhi(2) - Jaipur( 2) - Agra (2) - Khajuraho(2) - Varanasi(2) - Bodhgaya(1) - Jhansi(0) - Patnem(4) - Mumbai(1)

View Away in India!!! in a larger map

• Duration: 30 days. From the 6th of December 2012 until the 6th of January 2013
• Budget: €750 without including the flight tickets, travel insurance and visa application.
• Start and finish points: Mumbai
• Airline used: Turkish Airlines
• Modes of transportation used: Flight (From Mumbai to Udaipur), state-owned bus (Udaipur-Jaisalmer, Jaisalmer-Deshnok, Deshnok-Amritsar, Amritsar-Chandigar) and trains (all the other rutes)
• Class in the trains: 3AC (the third most expensive class), Sitting chair (they call it CC if I'm not mistaken), and the SL or Sleeper Class (quite an experience!)
• Train bookings: I did it on the train stations, avoid as much as possible the travel agents!
• Approximated distance: 7300 Km
• Company: I made the trip alone although I met some old friends in Delhi, Khajuraho and Goa, and I also did some day-trip with people I met in the hotel or train
• Weather: I went in the Indian winter, in general the weather was comfortable, between 10 and 20 degrees, although in some parts it was about 4 to 5 degrees (Varanasi was very cold) and others about 35 degrees (Patnem in Goa)
• Price per meal: It is about 100 and 200 rupees (€1 to €3), but in the places where locals eat the price is about 50 rupees (€0.7), and in the restaurants of the Indian Railway System is 22 rupees (€0.4) ;)
• Price per double room: This is very diverse, but the lowest price I paid per night was 200 rupees (€3). The most expensive was 1500 rupees (€20)
• Price per tourist attraction: about 300 rupees (€4.5). The entrance to the Taj Mahal is 750 rupees (€11) (note that Indians pay 20 rupees for that) 
• Special days: Christmas was in Varanasi, foreigners in the hotel made a little celebration. New year's eve was in Patnem and I had dinner and little party with some friends on the beach

To be updated soon...

My last post was almost 3 months ago. It doesnt mean I didnt have topics to write about, complete the opposite: too many things were happening in my life to take a time and write about them. Take this post as a sort of teaser (:P) about the upcoming topics:

• The end of my experience in France 
• Several posts related to the trip to India (DONE 1, DONE 2), Israel, Palestine (DONE 1, DONE 2),  and Romania (bonus-track: my superquick visit to Istanbul)
• An assessment of my 4-years European experience and the end of this chapter of my life
• The opening of the new chapter. The Colombian one :)
• The books I read in my trip (Steve Jobs Way, El Llano En Llamas, Final del Juego)

On wednesday 23rd I'll be living in finally in Colombia, I hope I can catch up with these posts soon ;-)