I stayed with family in Mumbai and after few days there made my way to Pune. It was nice to see there is now actually expressway to Pune and it takes about 3 hours to reach Pune instead of 4-4.30 hours. Again bus ride was not a joy I paid 160RP for ticket, guy next to me paid 140RP for the same ticket and person across the aisle paid 120RP. This for the same bus and exact same start and end points. Again you have to f-ing haggle every step of the way when in India. There is no such thing as honesty in this place.

Visited old friend in Pune, he has built a fantastic office building inside the IT park in Banglore. Once inside the park building look no different than office buildings you would see in silicon valley. Companies like Infosys, Wipro are building IT parks over 90-100 acre area, each. However one thing that is missing is there are hardly any trees around and there is no open space/garden anywhere. Its a shame that even when developing high-tech facilities that are supposed to parallel things found in the west, city planner in India do not pay any attention to trees, open spaces etc. I wonder if Civil engineers in India are actually taught subject of town planning.

Anyway, after few days in Pune decided to rent a car and visit Ajanta
and Ellora Caves. Both of these sites are on UNESCO world heritage list and they are really worth visiting. Did not see as many tourists as one encounters in Rajasthan. However most of them were from France. Met a French guy who is claiming unemployment of 800 euros and travelling around the world for 8 months, how long can France let thins type of stuff go on, but I wouldn't mind govt that pays me 800 dollars a month to do nothing.

After Ajanta and Ellora, came back to Mumbai. Then spent couple of days visiting coast line of Maharashtra called Kokan. It was actually rather nice trip, while growing up in Bombay/Pune never got chance to visit this part of the state. Visited the village of Nijsure family -- I had no idea one could trace roots of Nijsure family at least 400 years in that village.

After returning to Mumbai I took a quick flight to Banglore to conduct few interviews for my company -- Skystream networks. The Jet airways service was rather nice and efficient, first experience in India for me where someone cared about customer satisfaction. Although it was surprising that at check-in they never asked for photo ID!! Banglore was a huge disappointment, it really used to be beautiful city with clean air, lots of tree-lined roads. Now it is nothing but city chasing the mighty dollar at any cost. Again case where city has employed planners with 0 IQ. It took me close to an hour to go 7KM at 8.00AM. Read articles in newspapers that city is NOW thinking about light rail, overpasses etc. The IT boom in Banglore started 10 years ago and now they are talking about infrastructure, by the time they build it traffic will be 10 times larger and infrastructure will be behind time. Yet another case of missed opportunities for Indian city planners -- if there is such a thing in India.

Actually I interviewed about 20 candidates while I was in Banglore, I asked one guy who had been working with Linux for 8 years, have you installed and configured linux box on your own, his answer was I don't do that there are people in my company do that work for me!! What the F--k. Sorry to say a silicon valley company would never hire any of those idiots.
But I guess if you have well defined project, and willing to pay someone US$5/hr you can hire these guys.