First Weekend - 6/12/11

This Sunday was our first day off since starting work - we celebrated by sleeping in.  For brunch, around 11, we went to a donut shop nearby (Cafe Peterdonuts - excellent donuts and hot chocolate), where we met an American, Anna, who is here for a 2 year contract with an NGO.  She's been in Pune for 7 months, and she told us all about cool places to visit, how to not get ripped off by rickshaw drivers, and where western food can be found.

After brunch, we caught a rickshaw (150 INR) to the Shaniwar Wada, a 300 year old fortress in the middle of the city from which the Peshwa once ruled, until the British took over.  The ride went better than I thought - three people could fit comfortably in the rickshaw (Ray stayed at the guest house to do med school applications), and as long as you're ok with the sound of a lawnmower engine behind you there's no problem.

Just as we got to the fortress, it started to rain, so we wandered around the covered battlements above the gate first; once the rain slowed we went on to explore the rest of the fortress.

People are playing cricket everywhere

These spikes are mounted at the height of a war elephant's forehead to discourage any would-be battering rams

Indian people would stop us and ask to take pictures, or to practice English, or to just ask if this is our first time in India and what we think.

After seeing the Wada, we walked across a bridge over the river in search of lunch and the Pataleshwar Cave Temple.  We found the first easily, in the form of a hotel/restaurant off a side street.  The food was excellent, but we ordered far too much of it - we keep forgetting that these are family-style portions, not individual meals...

After lunch we had a hard time finding the cave temple.  We had a map, but no street names.  In fact, there don't seem to be many street names in India.  We asked for directions a few times, but nobody seemed to know what or where it was (which seemed odd, because if there were a 1300 year old temple in my city I feel like I'd know about it.  Perhaps things are different in countries with more than 500 years of history).  Eventually an Indian student and his friends said they were going there anyway, and would be happy to show us around.  It quickly became apparent that they weren't really going there - they started asking for directions as well, and had about the same luck.  However, asking for directions in Marathi ended up being far easier than asking in English, and eventually we found the general area the temple was in.  It ended up being behind a small, barely marked gate that we had passed several times in our search.

Our guides

We went inside the grounds and walked to the cave temple itself.  It had been carved out of a single piece of solid rock, just below ground level.  There was a pagoda outside, and then back in a cave the main area, a room with large columns and several shrines.  It was incredible.

After seeing the temple, we said goodbye to our Indian guides and headed back to the guest house.  When we thanked them for showing us around, they said if was no problem - "while you are here, you are a guest of the Indian people.  It is our honor to be your host and take care of you."