Conference done, now for some fun!

OK, so attending the conference is an essential part of this trip (funding largely!) but I’m glad it is out of the way. On Wednesday afternoon I attended the conference and did my thing of being sociable with the attendees. I didn’t intend to stay until the evening drinks but since the wine was free (and I didn’t fancy another £10 per glass for a mere sip), I decided to stick around for one (which turned out to be two but who’s counting!). I felt a little guilty since I had left Captain Clarke to his own devices and he wasn’t getting a glass of wine but work is work! I returned to our hotel and he wasn’t the slightest bit bothered. I got changed and we wandered out to the shopping mall I had read about.

The shopping mall adjoins the hotel where the conference was taking place so was easy to find. India really is a country of contrasts! Once walks from a busy, noisy and bustling street where people are sitting on the pavement playing cards and dogs sleep effortlessly just about anywhere they can, into an opulent glistening shopping mall full of shops that only the very well off can afford! What a difference! We wandered through the mall admiring things that we haven’t been able to afford for some time and then out into what is known as ‘Festival Square’. It transpires that there are, in fact, four malls on each side of Festival Square. There are numerous restaurants ranging from the very basic to the very posh and everything in between. Each mall is slightly different and, whilst the initial one was unaffordable to most, there are others that are far more reasonably priced. One even has a Clarke’s shoe shop!

We happened across a restaurant called ‘The Wine Rack’. It looked OK so we decided to give it a go. The staff were very friendly and suggested that we didn’t eat from the ‘non-veg’ menu because there is a virus relating to meat going around the world – I assume he meant coronovirus which, whilst related to meat, I don’t think we would have caught in that particular restaurant. In any event we opted for the veg menu and enjoyed a cheese platter to begin with followed by a delicious fulche (special bread that is steamed and, in this case, rolled flat) topped with a spicy tomato sauce and spinach and cheese – almost an Indian version of a pizza! This was followed by a shiitake mushroom dish with chilli and ginger. We washed the meal down with a bottle of local wine and then followed up with a couple of ‘Black Dogs’ each. The whole meal including the bottle of wine and the Black Dogs came to £58! A significant improvement on the first meal!

I should explain at this juncture what exactly Black Dog is. Black Dog is a whisky that is distilled in Scotland but bottled in India and is only available in India. It is regarded by some as inferior to a whisky bottled in Scotland but not in our opinion! We like Black Dog and always try to have one or two when we are in India. On our way back to the hotel we passed a ‘Liqueur Store’. We popped in and discovered we could buy a bottle of Black Dog which we duly did and took back to the hotel! On arrival in the hotel Captain Clarke procured some ice and we sampled our bottle of Black Dog. This may have been our downfall because I awoke early to get ready for my full day of conference yesterday and had a distinctly thick head! I made my way to the conference and vowed that I really shouldn’t drink on the night before a conference!

The conference went OK. I chaired a couple of panels and did my speaking thing. For anyone interested (and I suspect that is no-one) the Indian data centre market is exploding! Demand outstrips supply by about 5 to 1 and space is sold even before a single shovel has hit the ground! One company that was at the conference yesterday announced a data centre complex in Mumbai six days ago and has not even secured the permits needed yet but has sold out and is already planning a second complex in Mumbai and another in Chennai! Money is no object either … there are banks and financiers falling over themselves to supply funding for these facilities! If I were a little younger and didn’t have commitments at home I would be staying out here for a couple of years and earning an absolute fortune! As one attendee at the conference said to me, “Spend a couple of years out here and you could clean up”!

Anyway, I’m not and the conference is now over. I did end up in the afternoon with a really quite bad headache. I’m not sure if this was attributable to the Black Dog or the fact that I had to listen to an odious little man who is the ex-CTO of a very large global taxi company that has been quite controversial in places. You may have gathered I am not that keen on him – he is typically American and full of himself … despite the fact that he was fired by his employers by email during a conference in Monaco last year! He arrived employed and left out of work – not that I would very gloat! I made my way back to the hotel to find Captain Clarke ironing shirts.

Now, I am not one to criticise (or am I?) but when I left the hotel yesterday morning Captain Clarke was still in bed asleep. I arrived back and he suggested he was going to lay down for a snooze. He spent the next three hours doing his impression of a warthog … and I have to say his impression is very convincing! So, I took some headache tables and spent a few hours doing very little until the headache subsided. When Captain Clarke eventually stirred from his noisy slumber he got himself ready and we went out to the mall again. This time we tried a restaurant called the Delhi Heights.

The Delhi Heights served an array of foods from around the world. Captain Clarke and I both chose to have ‘Butter Chicken’ which is a dish specific to Delhi and nothing like the sweet and rather insipid butter chicken sold in the UK. It was delicious! What was interesting though was that looking around the restaurant we were the only non-Indian people there and we were the only people eating Indian food! Everyone else was eating Italian or American food … I guess it is the Indian equivalent of our ‘going out for an Indian’ … they were ‘going out for a European’! The food was absolutely delicious, albeit with portions a little too large even for Captain Clarke. We washed this down with two bottles of local wine (I noticed that the water being served came from the tap so decided wine would be safer) and the total price … £35 including two bottles of wine and the delicious Butter Chicken!

We met a couple of chaps in there who were from Gujarat. They were apparently in Mumbai on holiday and seemed to be very close friends! One of them chatted to Captain Clarke but I couldn’t really hear what he was saying. The other was on the phone so didn’t take part in the conversation. I realised this morning that I have been to Gujarat … albeit that I didn’t know … because Ahmedabad is in Gujarat! Anyway, they seemed very pleasant and, when we left, they both stood up to shake hands and wish us a good stay in “their country”.

So, today is another day. Who knows what it will bring. Captain Clarke and I are going to try and explore the new metro system and venture south towards the southern tip of Mumbai where most of the tourist attractions are. Watch this space, anything could happen!!

A typical Indian street

The Palladium Mall has shops that are affordable only by the very few!

This amazing sculpture is made of tiny stainless steel balls welded together!

The 'Dabbawalla' is made from thousands of watches welded together and a tiffin box in the shape of a stomach

Festival Square is at the centre of four malls

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