I've just gotten back from my first official wander. Basically I strapped on my satchel, put my camera in my pocket, and headed out the door. The strangest feeling about walking around here is that of utter illiteracy; all of the street signs are in a language so foreign to my brain that I obviously can't understand anything. I'm used to at LEAST being able to sound out words, but with an entirely different character set, it's completely and totally impenetrable.
All this by way of saying that even if I *had* a map, it would do me no good at all. So I started out by walking out of the hotel and turning right at every corner. With luck, I'd just come back to the hotel again, and otherwise I could turn around and retrace my steps. Plus that meant I wouldn't have to try crossing any streets, which is a major plus.
Sure enough, after a few minutes got back to my hotel, so I decided I was tough enough to cross over and do the same to the block across the street. Not that anything here can really be called a "block," exactly, but you get the point. It took me about two or three minutes to get to the other side, waiting for the mobs and mobs of motorcycles to break long enough for me to run. It's really weird getting such a sense of accoplishment for just crossing the street, but I really felt proud of myself. (laugh)
This time as I walked, I passed a herd of tiny little black and white goats, and a pack of chickens. (What do you call a group of chickens, anyway? A cluck of chickens? A nugget of chickens? I have no idea.) I took a few pictures of some insanely gorgeous buildings, one of which apparently used to be the residence of a Major of some kind, and is now a branch of the India Life Insurance company.
When I got back to the hotel this time, I decided to try walking in a straight line as far as I could go, so off I went down the street. I'm not usually this careful about directions when I wander around a new place, but it's harder for me when I have to rely solely on landmarks, which are strange enough, than when I can use street signs. I got to the end and noted down a yellow sign in English, for a business conference center, for where I'd have to turn to get back home, and then I found myself on a huge busy street that would be, if there were actually lanes, at least 6 lanes wide. There were shops and businesses and restaurants all up and down it, so I went that way for about a mile, stopping at a coffee shop for a nice big iced mocha (yes I know, whatever), and drank it while the power went out. Nobody but me even looked up when the lights went out; even the guy watching sports on the TV in the corner just went back to reading his paper. Further down the street, I poked my nose into a local college campus until a guard told me I had to leave.
On the way back down, two tiny toothless old ladies in saris...well, they cornered me against a ston fence and kept trying to put a red thumbprint on my forehead and sprinkle me with some kind of yellow powder. I feel bad that I have no idea what it was, but regardless, I didn't want it on my face, so I kept saying No! and waving them off and trying to get away without actually knocking them over. Then a very helpful man ran over from a bus stop and started yelling at the old ladies, who yelled right back and ignored me long enough for me to get away.
Somewhere along here I found a bridge across one of the three rivers in Pune (again, no map so I don't know which one), so I went to the other side and started wandering there, with the end of the bridge as my new "home" point. Eventually I got to a place where to go around the corner I'd have to walk through a narrow, crowded market of people selling all kinds of fruits that I don't know what they are. At first I'd decided that I'd reached the limit of my comfort zone and should turn around, and then I said to myself that I'm in INDIA for pete's sake, and if I couldn't squeeze my way through a little market on a corner, I have no business thinking of myself as an adventurer. So off I went, and I got through without being forced to buy anything, and found a whole bunch more streets to walk around. I looked in a few little malls (like three or four shops in a plaza), saw a big silver dome in the distance, and decided I wanted to go to where it was, so I crossed some more streets to get there.
In case you're ever in India and you want a quick tip on how to cros the streets here, even the six-lane ones (which I did, several times!! Woo hoo Boy Scout Badge in Urban Exploring for me!), the trick is this: just go for it. Get rid of that pesky sense of "self-preservation" that's holding you back. The cars and motorcycles and auto-rickshaws do their thing, and you have to do your thing. Just try to move quickly and avoid being hit by one of them, and you'll be fine.
It had been about two hours by now, and even though I love the sunshine and the heat, a little dose of A/C sounded pretty good, so I started back to the hotel. On the way, there was a kid's clothing store with pictures of little Indian girls wearing fancy saris...and anyone who knows about my relationship with my little spoiled niece won't be surprised to learn that I popped right in.
The store wasn't exactly the kind of place where you can browse; the merchandise is all behind counters, and a guy brings stuff out of boxes and lays it out. I think in ten minutes, with four guys pulling boxes off the shelves, I saw about twenty dresses and saris and little school outfits; this one in silk and that one in cotton and this one with more beading and that one with less. I told them she was almost 8 years old, and they pulled out something in a size 28, which looked a tiny bit small, not that I'm really any kind of judge of these things, so I asked for one size bigger. "Oh, she's a *fat* one, is she?" the guy asked me, and winked and brought out a size 30. I ended up buying this remarkable gold-and-pink silk outfit with a full, twirly skirt, and absolutely coated with beads and sequins, and she is absolutely going to *FLIP.* It's good to be the cool uncle.
Later this evening I'll go out with the two guys from my office, and hopefully I can get them to pick a good place where I can take them to dinner for their trouble.
In other good news, I'm being moved to the other hotel in the morning! I'm really looking forward to being in a place where I have full-time internet access, and don't have to buy vouchers with access codes an hour at a time from the front desk. Plus it'll be in a different part of the city, so I can have a whole new place to wander in, and they have a concierge who I'm sure will be able to help me figure out this whole taxi/auto-rickshaw thing.