jblomenberg16
Grandmaster
I have the good fortune to work in an industry and for a company that has given me the opportunity to see some places of the world I would have never seen otherwise.
I recently returned from my second trip this year to India, the first being in March. Yep, India, not India-na.
The purpose of this trip was to meet with our counterparts at our company's offices in the country, visit some of our end users at a Coal Mine, and finally meet with our OEM customer's that install our product in their mining equipment.
Our product happens to be a 1050hp, 1860 cubic inch, twin turbocharged V-12 diesel engine, and the equipment happens to be a 100Ton capacity mining dump truck.
During the 11 day trip I traveled just over 20,000 miles in various aircraft(including a 16 hour non-stop flight from Mumbai to Newark), and about 500 by car. That combination resulted in 47.5hours spent in the airplanes, and 25 hours in the cars. You do the math...my average speed in the airplanes was somewhere around 420MPH, and average speed in cars was a mere 20MPH!! More on the average road speed later.
The journey was fast pace, with just about every day including either travel, meetings, or combination thereof.
Day 1. Drive to Cincinnati. Fly to Paris. Then fly from Paris to Mumbai, and arrive at night on Day 2 India time, and stay the night in Mubmai.
Day 3. Early flight from Mumbai to Pune, check into hotel, and then meetings that afternoon with company counterparts in India.
Day 4. Early flight from Pune to Delhi, then another flight from Delhi to Varanasi. 6+ hour drive from Varanasi to Singrauli, arriving about 9pm local. Stay at the mine camp. Got to cross the Ganges river!
Day 5. Drive to 2 different Coal mines near mine camp to see the trucks in operation and talk to the operators. Afternoon meetings with mine site management and local truck maintenance reps. Drive back to Varanasi, arriving around 2am local.
100Tons of coal in the bed of the truck.
Me by the same model truck in March. The tires are about 9 feet tall, and these are "Small" trucks by comparison to most these days. Currently the largest trucks in the world have 300 to 400 ton payload capacity and weigh in well over 1,000,000 lbs GVW.
Day 6. Late morning flight from Varanasi to Delhi, then Dehli back to Pune. Arrive in Pune early evening.
Day 7. Sleep in to recover from Jet Lag and 6 straight days of being on the road. Meetings in the afternoon to debrief on minesite visit. Go out for diner in Pune and explore the city.
Day 8. Early flight from Pune to Bangalore. Drive 5 hours from Bangalore to Mysore. Mid afternoon meetings with OEM team to discuss meeting agenda for next day. Evening meal in Mysore and a few hours of site seeing (the first and only actual site-seeing we did).
Our hotel (former guest house for visitors to the King of Mysore)
Crappy night time photo of the Palace in Mysore
Day 9. Morning meetings with OEM technical team, followed by plant tour of the truck assembly factory. Late morning / early afternoon meeting with OEM senior management. Lunch on site, followed by 5 hour drive back to Bangalore to catch a late flight back to Pune. Arrive in Pune around 11pm local.
Day 10. Morning meetings again with company counterparts and local management to discuss and debrief from minesite and OEM visit. Afternoon flight from Pune to Mumbai. Catch 11:30pm local flight from Mumbai to Newark.
Day 11. 16hour flight back to Newark. Flew over some famous locations, such as Kandahar, Afghanistan and Moscow to name a few as we arced up over the Middle East and then Europe before crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Flight path takes us over Greenland before landing in Newark just after 5am EST. Welcomed home by homeland security at the immagration and customs area. It was great to hear that officer say "Welcome home." Watch the sunrise over Manhattan through the windows in the C-concorse at Newark / Liberty. WHAT A beautiful sight, and it was so great to see that sunrise here in the USA after the last 10 days of being out of the country. Catch a late morning flight back to Indianapolis, and drive home. Give my wife and daughter a big hug and kiss, and then focus on staying awake until a reasonable hour that night to help fight off the jet lag and get back on Indiana time.
NYC Skyline at Sunrise...what a sight for sore eyes!
Flight path as viewed on the in-flight monitor (prior to take off and the "turn all cellular phones off announcement.")
Lets just say that when I woke up on day 12 I was just a little bit disoriented and still not sure what timezone I was in!
Here's a map showing the places I was at during my trip. Mumbai and Pune in the West, Delhi in the North, Varanasi and Singrauli in the North East, and Bangalore and Mysore in the South.
As mentioned modern cities are like other big cities...crammed with people and traffic. The major difference is that trafic and people are much more dense, and the rules of the road are much less defined. Pretty much the only rule is that you drive on the left, and even that isn't followed. Lanes are merely a suggestion, traffic lights are there just to tick you off, and the rules of the road are the bigger you are, the more right of way you have. Horns and lights are honked and flashed constantly. I think there is actually a meaning to the combinations of honks and flashes, but I wasn't able to figure them out.
Once out of the big cities though, the roads quickly deteriorate and would be the equivalent of a 2 lane rural route through some of the "Sticks" here in Indiana...except those 2 lane roads are major thoroughfares and used like we use our interstate highway system. Again, there really are no rules, and in a 1km stretch you may encounter live stock, pedestrians, large trucks, motor cycles, 3 wheel autorickshaws, tractors, kids, dogs, you name it. Oh, and it was monsoon season, so what road there was was muddy and washed out.
20mph is a generous average. We either were going 50mph in a suicidal race on a winding road weaving in and out of traffic, or going about 1mph over bumps and negotiating farm animals in the road. I'll work on uploading some of the video...but lets just say that I did a LOT of praying while riding in the backseat of the car.
India is a beautiful country, and I will have to say that the people are wonderful there. The food is also great, and in both trips I've managed to keep a normal digestive system. I have Pepto-Bismal to thank for that, as well as a strict rule of not drinking the water. I did have some WTF drink, which was really good. Tasted like Powerade, only better.
If you have the chance to go, or have been, you'll know what I mean when I say that many things exceeded my expectations, and there are also manythings I couldn't believe had I not seen them with my own eyes.
We really are fortunate to live in this great country. While we sometimes take it for granted, or complain about our situation, I would reckon that not too many of us live in a shack on the side of the road, made of a few scrounged up blue tarps, held together by what every pieces of wire we could scrounge from the trash, which by the way happens to be piled randomly throughout the streets in many places. That, and the open sewers in some of the rural areas and free ranging livestock make for less than sanitary conditions. And, ever see pictures of the smog in LA in the 60's and 70's? That looks like beautiful clean air compared to the air pollution in Mumbai and other cities. While the EPA and other .gov entities certainly push thier boundaries in many respects, I for one would much rather deal with that than air so dirty visibility is less than 100 yds, and that your lungs hurt when you breath it.
Oh, and I did see quite a few different guns while I was there. Of course, all of the weapons I saw were part of armed security at airports. I have a few crappy cell pictures I'll upload with those. Anything from AK's, to MP-5's, to FAL's, to the INSAS rifle, whick looks like a Galil, FAL, and an AR had a love child after a long day of smoking hookah and watching Red Dawn. I even saw what looked to be old Sumoi style 9mm sub machine guns.
INSAS rifle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Leaving the terminal at Mumbai you walk past a machine gun nest that appeared to have an RPK style machine gun. The same area was also protected by an up-armored Jeep Compass looking vehicle, with a few troops with M16-A1 rifles. (sorry for the blurry cell phone pic). The guy closest to me with the M16 was a little unsure if I was actually talking on my cell phone trying to contact the hotel taxi, or taking a picture in a prohibited camera zone, so I moved the camera before it took the photo.
I recently returned from my second trip this year to India, the first being in March. Yep, India, not India-na.
The purpose of this trip was to meet with our counterparts at our company's offices in the country, visit some of our end users at a Coal Mine, and finally meet with our OEM customer's that install our product in their mining equipment.Our product happens to be a 1050hp, 1860 cubic inch, twin turbocharged V-12 diesel engine, and the equipment happens to be a 100Ton capacity mining dump truck.
During the 11 day trip I traveled just over 20,000 miles in various aircraft(including a 16 hour non-stop flight from Mumbai to Newark), and about 500 by car. That combination resulted in 47.5hours spent in the airplanes, and 25 hours in the cars. You do the math...my average speed in the airplanes was somewhere around 420MPH, and average speed in cars was a mere 20MPH!! More on the average road speed later.
The journey was fast pace, with just about every day including either travel, meetings, or combination thereof.
Day 1. Drive to Cincinnati. Fly to Paris. Then fly from Paris to Mumbai, and arrive at night on Day 2 India time, and stay the night in Mubmai.
Day 3. Early flight from Mumbai to Pune, check into hotel, and then meetings that afternoon with company counterparts in India.
Day 4. Early flight from Pune to Delhi, then another flight from Delhi to Varanasi. 6+ hour drive from Varanasi to Singrauli, arriving about 9pm local. Stay at the mine camp. Got to cross the Ganges river!
Day 5. Drive to 2 different Coal mines near mine camp to see the trucks in operation and talk to the operators. Afternoon meetings with mine site management and local truck maintenance reps. Drive back to Varanasi, arriving around 2am local.
100Tons of coal in the bed of the truck.
Me by the same model truck in March. The tires are about 9 feet tall, and these are "Small" trucks by comparison to most these days. Currently the largest trucks in the world have 300 to 400 ton payload capacity and weigh in well over 1,000,000 lbs GVW.
Day 6. Late morning flight from Varanasi to Delhi, then Dehli back to Pune. Arrive in Pune early evening.
Day 7. Sleep in to recover from Jet Lag and 6 straight days of being on the road. Meetings in the afternoon to debrief on minesite visit. Go out for diner in Pune and explore the city.
Day 8. Early flight from Pune to Bangalore. Drive 5 hours from Bangalore to Mysore. Mid afternoon meetings with OEM team to discuss meeting agenda for next day. Evening meal in Mysore and a few hours of site seeing (the first and only actual site-seeing we did).
Our hotel (former guest house for visitors to the King of Mysore)
Crappy night time photo of the Palace in Mysore
Day 9. Morning meetings with OEM technical team, followed by plant tour of the truck assembly factory. Late morning / early afternoon meeting with OEM senior management. Lunch on site, followed by 5 hour drive back to Bangalore to catch a late flight back to Pune. Arrive in Pune around 11pm local.
Day 10. Morning meetings again with company counterparts and local management to discuss and debrief from minesite and OEM visit. Afternoon flight from Pune to Mumbai. Catch 11:30pm local flight from Mumbai to Newark.
Day 11. 16hour flight back to Newark. Flew over some famous locations, such as Kandahar, Afghanistan and Moscow to name a few as we arced up over the Middle East and then Europe before crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Flight path takes us over Greenland before landing in Newark just after 5am EST. Welcomed home by homeland security at the immagration and customs area. It was great to hear that officer say "Welcome home." Watch the sunrise over Manhattan through the windows in the C-concorse at Newark / Liberty. WHAT A beautiful sight, and it was so great to see that sunrise here in the USA after the last 10 days of being out of the country. Catch a late morning flight back to Indianapolis, and drive home. Give my wife and daughter a big hug and kiss, and then focus on staying awake until a reasonable hour that night to help fight off the jet lag and get back on Indiana time.
NYC Skyline at Sunrise...what a sight for sore eyes!
Flight path as viewed on the in-flight monitor (prior to take off and the "turn all cellular phones off announcement.")
Lets just say that when I woke up on day 12 I was just a little bit disoriented and still not sure what timezone I was in!
Here's a map showing the places I was at during my trip. Mumbai and Pune in the West, Delhi in the North, Varanasi and Singrauli in the North East, and Bangalore and Mysore in the South.
As mentioned modern cities are like other big cities...crammed with people and traffic. The major difference is that trafic and people are much more dense, and the rules of the road are much less defined. Pretty much the only rule is that you drive on the left, and even that isn't followed. Lanes are merely a suggestion, traffic lights are there just to tick you off, and the rules of the road are the bigger you are, the more right of way you have. Horns and lights are honked and flashed constantly. I think there is actually a meaning to the combinations of honks and flashes, but I wasn't able to figure them out.
Once out of the big cities though, the roads quickly deteriorate and would be the equivalent of a 2 lane rural route through some of the "Sticks" here in Indiana...except those 2 lane roads are major thoroughfares and used like we use our interstate highway system. Again, there really are no rules, and in a 1km stretch you may encounter live stock, pedestrians, large trucks, motor cycles, 3 wheel autorickshaws, tractors, kids, dogs, you name it. Oh, and it was monsoon season, so what road there was was muddy and washed out.
20mph is a generous average. We either were going 50mph in a suicidal race on a winding road weaving in and out of traffic, or going about 1mph over bumps and negotiating farm animals in the road. I'll work on uploading some of the video...but lets just say that I did a LOT of praying while riding in the backseat of the car.
India is a beautiful country, and I will have to say that the people are wonderful there. The food is also great, and in both trips I've managed to keep a normal digestive system. I have Pepto-Bismal to thank for that, as well as a strict rule of not drinking the water. I did have some WTF drink, which was really good. Tasted like Powerade, only better.
If you have the chance to go, or have been, you'll know what I mean when I say that many things exceeded my expectations, and there are also manythings I couldn't believe had I not seen them with my own eyes.
We really are fortunate to live in this great country. While we sometimes take it for granted, or complain about our situation, I would reckon that not too many of us live in a shack on the side of the road, made of a few scrounged up blue tarps, held together by what every pieces of wire we could scrounge from the trash, which by the way happens to be piled randomly throughout the streets in many places. That, and the open sewers in some of the rural areas and free ranging livestock make for less than sanitary conditions. And, ever see pictures of the smog in LA in the 60's and 70's? That looks like beautiful clean air compared to the air pollution in Mumbai and other cities. While the EPA and other .gov entities certainly push thier boundaries in many respects, I for one would much rather deal with that than air so dirty visibility is less than 100 yds, and that your lungs hurt when you breath it.
Oh, and I did see quite a few different guns while I was there. Of course, all of the weapons I saw were part of armed security at airports. I have a few crappy cell pictures I'll upload with those. Anything from AK's, to MP-5's, to FAL's, to the INSAS rifle, whick looks like a Galil, FAL, and an AR had a love child after a long day of smoking hookah and watching Red Dawn. I even saw what looked to be old Sumoi style 9mm sub machine guns.
INSAS rifle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Leaving the terminal at Mumbai you walk past a machine gun nest that appeared to have an RPK style machine gun. The same area was also protected by an up-armored Jeep Compass looking vehicle, with a few troops with M16-A1 rifles. (sorry for the blurry cell phone pic). The guy closest to me with the M16 was a little unsure if I was actually talking on my cell phone trying to contact the hotel taxi, or taking a picture in a prohibited camera zone, so I moved the camera before it took the photo.
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Thanks for sharing -incoming rep
I have been to a few third world countries, and yes, seeing with your own eyes is the only way to go. A lot of whiney people in this country should be sent to some of these places, probably wouldn't think they had it so rough afterwards. Great post, glad you made it back safely!
