ChrisandCin

A couple of days ago I was in bareilly on a trip. With nothing to do I went for a walk and found the train station just down the road, so with camera in hand here is what I saw.

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I dont get it, I never will … but Indians love their politicians. You would swear these politicians were gods, the way they are worshipped and revered. Its very very strange.

Recently the railways minister came to a make shift stage near where I live to play on the hearts of the locals who had their land bought and then resold by a developer. The developer of course made a huge markup on the sale of the land… so the locals were pissed and want a but of the action.

So all over the road leading to the stage that was built for her to make her speech they put huge banners of the woman politician. Of course in true illogical logic the speech and its stage occurred at peak hour in the evening and blocked the main road to and from the airport!

This is my second year of witnessing the festival of noise known as Diwali. Here is a short video of the affair , mainly its the noise from the apartment building next door .

This year I found 5 skyrockets on my 11th floor balcony! At one point one jut the sliding glass door, which luckily was closed!

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Went to the Temples at Khajaraho last week, pretty interesting and suprisingly well kept they were. These temples are simply about sex, lots of statues of people doing acts of nature… and not much religion going on. The temples themselves date back to 950 AD, they have been restored though, and sadly so as they look almost new, there are just bits here and there that give an indication to the age of the temples.

What was weird was the way no one was praying here, no priests were present, no offerings, nothing. Just tourists looking and looking.

Our hotel was interesting to say the least… a real dive you can checkout my review of it on www.tripadvisor.com here

India is a strange place, in some cities there are proper hypermarkets like we see in all parts of world, but in most cities these simply don’t exist. Well I say they don’t exist, but in fact they do exist, just not in the same format we as foreigners think they should.

In Kolkata we have a store called Spencers, its a ‘hypermarket’ as they call it, but in fact its far from it. By Indian standards its top class, but its relatively small, and really really disorganised.

Shopping in India for food is different, here are some pointers when you go shopping in a ‘hypermarket’…

Prices – they are rarely displayed, what you have to do is look at the item you want to buy and somewhere on it will be the retail price … confusing to say the least, and if you have bad eyesight your not going to have fun!

Quality – I say shopping here is like shopping in the dollar store back home, because thats the quality you have. Some items are always bad quality, like aluminum foil its always so thin you can put finger thru it, kitchen towel that is so bad if you put water on it, and you find it dissolves into gunk… or the one that gets me is the fruit and veg, but lets look at that separately…

Canned goods – they simply don’t exist here, so strange for a country like this with the huge population and food issues, and no canned food. When you do see canned foods here its baked beans, never buy the local baked beans, its not good, dont buy them! I will admit you can find canned goods, but in the international sections, but bring your own can opener as you wont be able to find one here!!

Consistency – The stock may not be here tomorrow, so always buy it now, for instance in the smaller food store Food Bazaar across the road in City center 2 shopping mall where I live, they have had no UHT milk now for 3 weeks. Lucky I bought 4 containers of it previously. Another thing is brands, whats here today may never be seen again in that store ever… Overall the way they control the stock is downright dismal, if you see it today buy it now and in bulk is the rule of shopping here!

Fruit and Veg – oh its bad and there is simply no quality. You will see rotten fruit and veg being sold all the time, most stuff that should be refrigerated isn’t, and what is in the refrigeration has a hard life, as they turn off the refrigeration at night! Also the variety of fruit and veg in India is bad. For instance there is just one type of tomato, one type of potato and one type of onion (which I swear isn’t an onion but a shallot).  Want a salad, nah its not going to happen unless you are lucky enough to find some iceberg lettuce thats not rotten, or has the outside stripped off it so all you have is the inner yellow/white leaves! Funny thing is they sell salad dressing all the time…

Veg or Non Veg stores  – YES there is such a thing here, Food Bazaar is a vegetarian only grocery store, they wont even sell eggs ! But spencers have meat, no red meat of course, although the fresh meat food is in the porn section as I call it, as its a room off the side where you can enter and find the meat. But whats strange is that there is frozen meat products in the main part of the shop, the chicken is in the same freezer as the frozen peas.. go figure.Fresh and edible fruit and veg is also a big big problem, here at my local store they get a delivery at 6pm every day, problem is the food is generally picked at 6am and kept in the hot sun until 6pm when its delivered to the store,  like yesterday I had the guy in the store get some fresh broccoli for me, I was in the store as it was delivered and what I got was a hot head of broccoli with good oozing out of the stem that stunk.. gross.

Why dont the locals use the hypermarkets  you ask ?

See the locals are yet to adopt this shopping under one roof for all items, they think its much more expensive this way, so what they do is get up at 6am and go to the market to get the fruit and veg for the day, and the meat. If they want something like sugar, then they go to the shop that sells sugar, if they want some bottled water, they then go to another shop that sells bottled water…etc etc. Its very time consuming and as I showed my co-workers the big all in one stores are actually cheaper… slowly they are changing their ways.

Another problem with locals and a reason they don’t shop at these ‘hypermarkets’ is the fact they don’t own refrigerators, so in fact they have to buy everything that they will use on that day, they cant keep milk and they cant keep butter even for more than a day with the heat here. Unfortunately as it seems there is no locally made refrigerators this wont change as fridges for sale are really expensive so the locals will be a while in adopting the hypermarket.

This brand new overpass is on the way from the Airport into Kolkata City. Its new!, and its rough, there are sections that look like they are sagged, you can see them at the start and end of the video. Yes its rough , thats not my bad camera work!

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