2018 India Trip Summary

Last week was my whirlwind trip to Bangalore.  On Tuesday, I had Qatar Airways flights from Prague to Doha to Bangalore.  I was ready to drop by the time I got to my hotel at 4 am on Wednesday.


Thursday was the Out & Equal LGBTQ India Forum.  The first of its kind event in India.  It was awesome to meet with executives from so many top Indian companies.

On Thursday night, the hotel held a drag show at the roof top bar.  I can't remember the last time I saw a drag show.  The headliners were Maya The Drag Queen, Rimi Heart, DJ Summer Camp, and Lady Bai.  The show was great!

We couldn't make it too of an evening because we had an IBM leadership workshop that started early Friday morning.

Another excellent day with IBMers from all over the world.  It really is a small IBM world sometimes.  For example, one of the participants from who recently transferred from Australia to Singapore is someone that I knew back in Atlanta.  We hadn't seen each other in probably 12 years.  Well, except for on Facebook.

I also got the chance to catch up with Mirek who used to work in Prague but is now in Singapore.  It's kind of funny that the Czech guy came to India to represent IBM in Singapore while I, the American, was here representing Czechia.

We were so busy that our first chance to even leave the hotel was on Friday night.  Several of us headed out for dinner and to get our first sight of India beyond the hotel lobby.

Rather than fly back home on Friday night, I paid for an extra day so that I could fly out Saturday night (actually super early Sunday morning).  This gave me the chance to see some of the sights in Bangalore during the day on Saturday.

On the way back I had a ten hour layover in Qatar which gave me a few hours to check out Doha.  But sightseeing in 46℃ (115℉) heat was a bit extreme though.