Indore to Khargone

At 8am I set off from the hotel in Indore to the Maral Overseas factory in Khargone some 60km away. My driver was a lovely man who skillfully took us over quite possibly the most bumpy and worst made road I have ever travelled on... It took 3 hours.

On the way we passed through many small towns and villages. All very interesting to see. There were many vehicles at the sides of the road that simply hadn't made it. Mostly overturned and crushed. It was a pretty scary ride but our big Chevrolet 4x4 seemed to isolate us well from danger.

After a couple of hours of driving we pulled over for a tea at one of the tiny roadside shops. It was the usual very milky very sweet darjeeling tea that seems to be the favourite of many Indians. I went to the toilet and it was just a hole in the floor at the back of the block that emptied into an open sewer that ran out alongside the tea shop. Hmmm. I wondered why the smell was so bad there.
Camel Train on the Indore road

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We continued our journey passing by another series of camel trains, the most impressive being one on a small foot bridge in the distance over a massive river. Unfortunately my camera on the phone didn't really pick it out very well.

We passed monkeys on the way at the side of the road. They sit and wait for passers by to throw them food.

One of the most amazing driving techniques I've seen in India is switching from left to right hand side of the road on steep hills. To the uninitiated this is scary. All of a sudden on a sharp bend one changes sides on the road. This is to allow big trucks more space to naviage the corner. But for a few seconds these same big trucks appear to be heading straight for you at break neck speed down hill!

Eventually we arrived at Maral Overseas and I was taken to their factory guest house. I was expecting a kind of bunk house, but it was more like a small 5* hotel. Very nice. I appeared to be the only person staying and had a cook and someone to look after the house all to myself.

Once I'd dropped my stuff in my room I was taken to the main entrance of the factory to be introduced to the people I was meeting. The president of the company came to meet me and welcomed me with a big bouquet of organic flowers. My name was on the company board welcoming me to the place. I was very impressed.

I spent the next 2 hours talking about our software to around 8 or so of the assembled staff. Then off we went to a glorious lunch in the guest house. This was so much better than I was expecting. The campus was beautiful, mature palm trees, rose gardens, green lawns immaculately cut. Very impressive.

The next day was spent training some of the staff to use the systems for real. Here we are having sent the first batch of data for one of the UKs major high street brands.