Trip to Pune: part 1

A fellow volunteer, Christina Cameron, and I left Ooty for Pune on October 1. It was my first substantive trip in India and I soon discovered that there are some really beautiful spots near Ooty that hopefully I will be able to visit someday. The first part was by auto and was four hours to Mysore.
Late Thursday night, 10ish, we bored a train from Mysore to...I don't remember, basically north. Pune is a couple hours east of Mumbai and all that is west-central India. So after spending a restless night, though it's hard to complain given that we did have A/C and a bunk, we arrived at ?. From ? we took a bus to Kohlapur and from there a bus to another ?. And finally a nice bus from ? to Pune. It sounds not so great but it really wasn't so bad. It was nice to see the countryside. Unfortunately I'm not a very intelligent packer and having to bring my computer in addition to cameras was a bit nerve wracking and tiring.
In Pune, Poo-nah, the weather is hotter though it was fall and really quite nice. Warm with a slightly cool breeze. The city is far larger than Ooty at around 3 million people. The Christian presence is not what it is in Ooty though I never felt uncomfortable more just that I stood out, which is obvious.
We were booked rooms at a YMCA. Expensive and insect ridden, the rooms weren't terrible only the best of available options. Pune in many ways was the India I thought I'd be going to. I took the days to walk through the streets, and my lunches at McDonalds. Being so much larger Pune did have some of the Western conveniences I have missed. No beef, but still, pepperoni pizza from a Pizza Hut, chicken from a KFC and nuggets from McDonalds. If people had constantly been staring at me I could have believed I was home, almost.

Link to pictures: Pune pictures