India, the "Incredible"

Good-bye Heathrow; Bangalore is boarding !! couple movies, Indian crew and on-board food, your journey to India already started on the British Airway flight. Great, gettin’ more excited.

Passport check, silly questions, luggage back and forth couple times to different x-ray machines, “who cares !” there might be a reason : name-tag, driver, almost 2 AM, the only thing that is important to end up somewhere in horizontal position. (editors comment: Phantom Menace, but will get back to it later)

Led lights in the street pavement, shining billboards – yes, this is the Silicon Valley of India.

At least for 10 minutes, the perfect roads just disappear, and you almost hit a group of kids (yes, at 2:30), while passing by a flock of cows. Couple red light crossings, you would fasten your seat-belt if there would be one on the back-seats.

40-50 mins to downtown, then another 30 to Electronic city. Jeeps full of soldiers, machine guns, stricter luggage check than at the airport. This is the moment when you can’t decide that you should feel safe, or actually it should scare you. (let’s just enjoy, feeling like back in Egypt when passing through the desert with the army protected convoy – but no, that should be another story)

the look, when i come out of my office

But let’s forget my adventures in electronic city and the IT giant which has more than 150K employees.

Just to summarize, the first two weeks I definitely felt like living on a space station on a strange planet, where everything is totally different "beyond the walls" .

the first thing you see out of "Gate 6"

Whatever you gonna do, there are three things that you could care about India:

FOOD (aka everything you can eat or drink)

Culture, I would make it simple and say TEMPLES

And the NATURE (jungles, animals, sea, mountains, deserts, etc.)

All your journey’s will be around these categories. Somewhere the “food” will be better (Hyderabad), somewhere the “temple” part will be amazing (the TAJ MAHAL could be a whole book story), somewhere you just enjoy the beach and jungle next to each other !!- and yess, somewhere you will just find everything in the perfect ratio - LOVE Pondicherry !!

So let’s do it one by one for couple sentences.

Food : I’m pretty sure you will eat more spice in your first week in India, like in your life at all. And hope that your stomach will be happy for it. Don’t look for forks and forget the knives; but at least you will usually get a spoon. Personally I have no issues with eating with hands, just need to order some roti, naan, chapatti, paratha, etc. They are different bread type, so you’ll see the variety of food options (bagel, toast, croissant –I think all the other cuisines together don’t have so many options).

So use your right hand, keep the left in your pocket and enjoy the food. If you can handle that people mix and eat with hands the nasty gravy with rice, then you are lucky; I can’t, period.

But even if you are not a curry addict, there are thousands and thousands of different tastes of the country. If you are not a big Asian expert you will be surprised day by day, that there are so many things hanging out from the trees that ppl can eat, and if it has a tiny sweet taste, then it can be called "fruit". If you are more conservative you’ll be fine as well, I tried at least 12 diff types of mango.

King of fruits :)

Ok Folks, next week will continue with the “temple”.. (yes, will write about the TAJ as well)

Moscow never sleeps

This crazy city has everything!

It’s the city of antonyms, opposite things at the same time! as any huge megapolises it has a very fast pace, people work enormous amount of time and never have spare minute. That’s why sometimes they might seem a bit rude as they are too focused on their endless things to do; always in a rush and don’t like being bothered or bumped in.

This city never sleeps, as when the early birds wake up to start their day, the night owls are just going to their beds. So it’s absolutely normal when at midnight you receive a call with the question ‘where are you ?’. And it’s absolutely normal to go to grab Sushi at 1am on Wednesday with friends, as when else?

This city is for those who have lots of energy, as otherwise you’ll be shattered every night and might want to stop it. Your friends finish work at 10pm, you grab some sushi again, and there's no excuse not to go ice-skating at midnight, cause "Daah", they already got gloves and fur-hat in their trunk for you. And you shouldn't miss the fully ice-covered Gorky park, which might have more ice surface, than many of the European countries in sum, and where the smile doesn't freeze even if it's -30C.

So this city is for flexible and stress resistant people as it’s impossible to plan anything, anyway your plans will be altered in the morning and you have to be prepared to adjust quickly, to make your decisions with no hesitation and to act according the flow!

so when you ask people "what are you doing next weekend?", they will most likely be surprised that you re asking them so much in advance about the day which has not come yet; If they have no idea what will they do this evening, they have not a list hint what will be their weekend like. People live on the go. Read on the go. Answer emails on the go.

So Moscow is a candy when you might not like the look of which at first, but the taste and the effect of which is beyond all the expectations.

Good luck everyone, in whatever you decide to do there!

when I say crazy, I mean CRAZY.. check out the next song