Phil in Bollywood!

Phil here. This week I went to India to discuss the business with our agent there. 

The economy is growing fast, there are 1.2 billion people, and many social, cultural and economic challenges to marketing products there! 

 Do you know what a Lakh is? It is hard discussing business when they use different terms for amounts than I was used to (although by the end of day one, I was using Lakhs like a local!) 

We arrived in Mumbai and it was HOT. . We made our way to the hotel. Mumbai looks very interesting at night. The traffic is chaos, Tuk-tuks  are everywhere. Car horns bleeping all the time. I'm sure that you need to be able to press your horn 100 times in a minute to get your license here - there certainly seems to be no emphasis on following the road rules! Each day it was one hour in traffic to and from the office.

Excellent hospitality from our hosts - lots of fantastic Indian food, and one night we went to a Bollywood movie! 'Rand a Basanti' - very interesting, but about as subtle as Les Patterson (typical of Bollywood movies!). I even had a chat with a Bollywood actor who was in the hotel gym at the same time as me - it seems like the hotel we stayed in was the place to be seen in Mumbai. I think he was a bit surprised when I asked him 'so what do you do?' - maybe I was supposed to recognise him! Nice bloke, though. 

I didn't take any photos (we didn't see any of the major sites, and I saw nothing I thought was worth photographing on our long car trips out of a car window!).  I flew out at 1.40 am after 3 full days of meetings, and was glad to get back home (to snowstorms!) 

India is a remarkable place, full of amazing contrasts. I would love to get out of the big cities and really see the place - maybe next time! In case you are wondering, a Lakh is 100,000. a Krohn (no idea of the spelling of this one!) is 10 million. Go figure!