Our Apartment!

We haven’t quite gotten to the school post yet, but we will! In the meantime, we thought we’d share a bit about the apartment. We had our first home cooked meal in our apartment tonight! Yay! We’re finally set up for living! The only thing missing is my desk now, but that should come Monday.

Our apartment is on the 30th floor (of 31!) of Sargam complex, building A. All of Nanded City is high rises — with each complex being named after something music related. Ours is one of the newer complexes, but everything is new — all within the last 10 years.

Here’s a panoramic view from our balcony.

The other buildings are part of the Sargam complex. Together, they have several play grounds, parking areas, tennis courts and basketball courts, and a walkway along the river. There’s also a pool – for everyone in Nanded City – next door to us. No one is in it this time of year. It’s only 80. They wait for hotter weather!

The river you see in the above picture is the Muhta, which flows east into Pune. It’s a bit warped because it’s a panoramic. What you see is to the north of Nanded City. Old Pune is north and east of us.

The view at night is particularly beautiful. Here’s a shot of that, looking east, down the Muhta toward Pune.

So it all looks beautiful, and it is. But there’s also the reality that systems and infrastructure don’t work the same in India generally – which is why Nanded City was developed and is so popular. They have very well maintained systems (even if it took us a week to get our hot water squared away! That was partially due to a card mix up, and not the system). If you look at this shot off our balcony, much of the white you see is garbage.

You also might notice that many trees are mostly underwater. There’s a dam a bit up the river, and they open and close it in response to water levels I assume. The level has varied quite a bit since we got here. Some days there are cows grazing on that green pasture. Some days, the green is an island and nothing can get to it!

Let’s head inside now! Here is our living room (part) and dining room (sans table). You can see the tile floor, which is throughout the apartment, and typical of homes here.

You can also see the tall windows, which have mosquito screens, even though I’m told mosquitos come up to the 30th floor! Air and air flow is incredibly important here. There is also a ceiling fan in every room.

The use of space is of course a bit different as well. Part of this is just city living. Here is our bed, showing off its storage space – in the bed!

The other double bed in the apartment has drawers underneath. This was particularly fortuitous for Acadia during a recent game of hide and seek with other kids in the building as it proved to be large enough to fit her, and rather difficult to ferret her out!

I don’t have a good picture of the kitchen, but it is essentially a sink with two long counters. We rented a fridge and Parag’s cousin’s borrowed an older stove top from their friends. Stoves run on gas, and the tank lives under the counter. Stove tops are typical in India. People have fridges, but some people don’t. OVens aren’t a thing — which sadly means a country without scones and chocolate chip cookies! (Don’t worry. We found Oreos in the store.)

Well, that’s enough for now. I’ll leave you with this nice pic of the girls on the balcony off our bedroom.