winter wonderland

Despite of the disturbing terror attack that happened nearby in the evening, we had a nice Saturday. It was our first free day since we arrived in India. We hadn’t seen a lot of the city yet so we decided to stay in Pune and start to visit the first one of Pune’s sights. Since we still have winter and chilly 33°C it was the perfect day for a trip through the city.

... highly motivated (but already suffering from the heat) on the way to the rikshaws

We went to Shaniwar Wada, the ruins of a palace which was built in 1732. At the entrance we strangely got somehow the feeling that we might not be perfectly welcome. But nevertheless we paid the 100 Rs entrance fee (Indians pay only 5 Rs) and ignored the disdainful behaviour of the guy who sold us the tickets.

After a few steps we saw, yeah … ruins, and would have loved more information about the palace. We read the in the travel guide about the place until we found out that the palace had become even more interesting for the Indian visitors since we arrived. It was almost funny to watch how some guys secretly tried to take pictures of us with their cell phones, some didn’t bother to keep it a secret, and others just came to us and asked to take a picture. Naive as we are we thought at first that they simply wanted us to take a picture of them (there are so many international companies here in Pune, we are by far not the only western people), but soon we noticed that they just wanted pictures together with us …

However, since we take pictures all the time, it is probably only fair if the Indian people take pictures of us too.

(street scene outside of the palace as seen from the palace wall)

After we had seen the palace we walked through the area nearby. It is so fascinating to see all the different booths where you can buy fresh fruits, juices, or all kinds of things to eat.

Later we went to Laxmi Road. The streets in this area have a large number of small shops with mostly traditional indian clothes but also all kind of other things. It was nice to spend some time in the bazaar atmosphere.