Baroda or Vadodara?

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am staying in a city called Baroda in the state of Gujarat.  Most of the major cities have been going through a renaming process ever since the end of British rule, which is why you will hear most Indians say Bombay instead of the city's new name since 1995, Mumbai.  Similarly, the city of Baroda was renamed to Vadodara in 1974.  You will hear these city names used interchangably and if you don't already know a city's second name, it can be very confusing, as you might imagine.  As I doing some research on this, I discovered that one of the proposed city renamings in from Delhi to Indraprastha.  I'm fairly certain I will never be able to pronouce Indrap.... correctly, so I'll stick with Delhi if that change ever goes through. 

Here's some more cities, if you're interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaming_of_cities_in_India

Vadodara (Baroda), Gujarat, India

Baroda is more rural than some of the larger cities in India, such as Delhi or Mumbai.  Because of this, there are a lot more motor bikes and scooters on the road than cars.  In the larger cities, I'm told there are many more cars and hardly any bikes.  This is probably a good thing.  I'm surprised that most of these people riding bikes here even make it home every night without being killed.  I myself had a few bike-riding experiences this past week and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, definitely not safe, but it wasn't too scary.  I'm sure it would have been a lot worse if I was the one driving.

Today, I actually got a bike ride to McDonald's for lunch.  I got a Chicken Maharaja-Mac meal (India's version of the Big Mac) and it was pretty good.  The rest of the menu is other chicken and veggie patty sandwiches (no beef).  The fries taste the same and the Coke is much sweeter and smoother than Coke in the US. The meal cost 150 rupees, which is $3.



Woman sitting side saddle on a bike,
this is very common



Family bike ride, the most I have seen on
one bike is 5

 McDonald's isn't the only thing that is super cheap here.  Pretty much anything you can think of is less expensive than the US and I'm guessing most of the world, except gasoline.  Gas is the equivalent of around $7 per gallon.  But a bottle of water from a vending machine at the airport is $0.20.  The cost of going to see a 3D movie is $3.  It's too bad some of these things aren't the same price back home, but I guess everyone in the US can be happy that gas is less than half the price it is here.

I'm going to finish watching Dumb and Dumber in Hindi.  It's just as funny in another language even though I can't understand the words.  Maybe I've seen it too many times...