The good The bad The ugly!

So far I have been only mentioning good things about our move to India. I guess you can say that we are in the honeymoon phase. But slowly and surely the bad and the ugly things are surfacing!

The one prominent thing I notice is that it is VERY hard to take some time off from your working day to do some exercise. I am talking about professionals who have challenging/demanding jobs and am not talking about people who work 9-5. (and even those don't exercise!)

By the time you are done with work and your day to day activities you are mentally so tired that you don't feel like going out again, fighting the traffic, finding a parking spot and then do some exercise. This applies to Pune. In Mumbai, the situation is even worse since commuting times are longer and commutes in general are lot harder.

Relatively speaking, it was much easier to get some form of exercise factored into your work day in US. Either before, during or after work you could stop by the Gym and sweat. If nothing else you could bike to work and get the calories burned that way. (Biking to work is an option here in Pune too but you will do more harm than good to your body by inhaling all the CO2)

Having said this, if determined one can still get decent exercise in the mornings and on weekends. e.g. I had some great tennis sets last Sunday on a clay court of Deccan Gymkhana or was able to go running on the back hills of Parvati. But this still doesn't compare anywhere close to the amount of sweat I used to loose doing the Bikram Yoga sessions in Bellevue.

Any how, enough of the cribbing considering I am still in the honeymoon phase! :)

One thing is interesting to note. Even with all this lack of exercise, the average weight of people in India is much much lower than that of western countries! I am going to ponder over reasons for this over a cold calorie packed beer! Cheers...