Today, I woke up at 8, took a quick shower and went to see our 3 young friends. They were still alive after having slept in the students’ dormitories.

At 9:30 we went to the official speeches for the launching of the ACM Programming Contest event.

After lunch, the students started their practice session at the IIT-K computer center. Quoting Mr Tiwari, the Manager:

IIT Kanpur has a 95% Unix and Linux-based computing facilities.

Of course I was thrilled… Bill Gates, hear this: “You only have 5% here…” :-)

By the way, the picture shows a 400-node Sun and HP Linux-based cluster used by researchers throughout IIT.

I can only dream of something like this in Mauritius :-)

We have finally reached the Indian Institute of Technology of Kanpur today after a 4 (or rather 5) hours train trip on the rather excellent Shatabdi Express train (the seats were very confortable and the food was nice)

Rajiv, Madhav and Yannick are going to stay in the student’s dormitories while I have a room in the Visitors Hotel (isn’t life cool?). To go there, I (for the first time in my life) travelled aboard a man-powered rickshaw (and the poor guy asked me Rs. 6…)

India is great! But I’m happy my ancestors decided to come to Mauritius 200 years ago :-)

Yes! Rajiv Persedos, Yannick Catherine, Madhav Ramlugun and I have arrived in Delhi at 11:30 today after an uneventful flight.

We immediately went to our hotel (The Grand Inn in Karol Bagh) and started looking for some food as we were extremely hungry. We made a big mistake though as we did not have any plan and we spent more than one hour to decide where to go (and how to go there).

In the end, we decided to use the mighty rickshaws. We payed the guy 50 indian rupees and we all climbed in the same small vehicle. It’s difficult to exactly explain how the traffic is in Delhi but it’s a cross between what we may have in Port-Louis during peak times and an asylum… It’s mad! And fun! But so tirying :-)

We went to Connaught Place, did some window shopping, ate a fantastic Chicken Maharaja meal and visited Palika Bazaar.

Now we are back in the hotel. We’ll have a quick dinner. And then dodo as we’re leaving for Kanpur at 05:00 tomorrow…

Please stay tuned for more info.