Kuku Storms Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India – Day 1

Ola Ajayi is a very good friend of mine. We met up as field engineers working for EDF. The contract involved upgrading PC's nationwide in all the Jobcenters in the UK. It was quite an extensive contract and involved a lot of travelling. For us, we would meet on many occasions at the various Jobcenter locations we were sent to. So that is how we became friends. The contract lasted for quite a while. At the end of it, we decided to take a stab a SAP HR. At that time, SAP was the up and coming "thing" to get involved in. From the investigations and research we had done we knew that providing we got the training, there was a lot of money in it for us in terms of wages. The problem we had was finding a SAP training company in the UK that charged a reasonable price to train you up. We decided that SAP HR would be the easiest to learn, however, the training cost, on average, was around £5,000.00. This was way over what we could afford. Another mutual friend suggested we fly over to India, Hydrabad, to do our training. This mutual friend, Ade, had actually booked his flight and was leaving in a weeks time to India. He went on to tell us that his fees for the 4 week course, hotel and flight came up to just over £1000.00. From the information that he gave us, it made perfect sense to invest £1000.00 in training in SAP HR in India. We did not choose Hydrabad, but rather opted for Bangalore. 

Using the power of Google, I was able to locate a place that offered training - Enterprise Logic

I met up with my friend Ola in Bedford, UK and from there we hired a cab to London Heathrow Airport. Our flight finally took off from Heathrow airport at around 10.20pm. The flight was with Sri Lanka Airlines took us on a 9 hour flight to Male for a brief stop and then to Colombo in Sri Lanka. We stopped in Sri Lanka for 2 hours before continuing our journey to Bangalore International Airport. We got to Bangalore around 8.30pm. By the time we picked up our suitcases and gone through customs, it was around 9.10pm.

I was totally taken back by what i saw. There were motor bikes and cars ALL over the place. Making our way to find the taxi rank was like making your way through a mine field... very dangerous. We finally got called to one side by a cab driver who after much difficulty in telling him where we wanted to go; he took us to a hotel to spend the night. However, before we managed to get a room in the Hotel, we had to bargain really hard with the agent who was organising the hotel room for us. For a period of 4 weeks, he wanted to charge us £1000. Little did he know that we also knew how to play his game? Finally we came to an agreement of £400 for a room with air conditioning, room service, and breakfast.

The hotel, Maya Hotel is situated right in the city centre, and only 15 minutes walk away from Enterprise Logic.