After quite a few cultural clashes and shocks in Chennai, we were (or at least almost) prepared for visiting our office in Erode.

From Chennai we had to take a 1-hour flight to Coimbatore, wherefrom we had to drive by car around 2 hours, to finally reach the destination city: Erode. To be honest, from Andorra to Erode, it’s a hell of a lot of hours of travelling.

Erode is a city with probably around 200 000 people, and in India, this is considered a small town….. yea I mean, it’s just almost 4 times bigger than the COUNTRY that I live in haha.

In Erode in addition to visiting the office and getting to know all of our developers, we also decided to one day dress up in traditional dresses. It was a bit of “Dress to impress” kinda thing, since we were invited to visit Mithus family, and we wanted to try to look like locals. I don’t think that worked out very well, but it was a nice experience.

The people in India are very kind. The generosity and hospitality of Mithus whole family was so wonderful. Although we did not understand each other very well, I think they liked us, or at least I want to believe so hehe.

While being there, we also got to experience the real food culture, meaning eating with the hands, from a plate which was a banana leaf.

Here are some memories from Erode and our office.

Epicorns office in Erode

The office is actually a big apartment turned into an office. In the beginning, meaning few years back, there was just Mithu and a couple of more guys, but look at them now! Very happy that I got to meet them all in person, I mean they are the ones I work with every day. One big plus for the decorations in the office, looks even more patrimonial than my own office in Andorra. Oh and you might notice, when you are inside an apartment / office / home and so on, you always take out your shoes and go barefoot.

Meeting the family in traditional dresses

Such a lovely family. Thank you again for the hospitality!

I have to mention here, that the dress was quite uncomfortable, although it was very beautiful. It took a very long time to actually fit it, I think we were in the store more than an hour. It took me around 2 min to choose the colors and material, all the rest was fitting, fixing and sweating inside the changing room.

Experiencing traditional food culture

So, this is basically how a typical plate + food portion looks like, in a restaurant. Doesn’t maybe look that tasty – but i really liked all the food that we tried!

It´s just to mix everything with your right hand and swipe it into your mouth. Very important that you eat with your right hand, since you supposedly clean your butt with the left one. Regarding that, I skipped that tradition (cleaning the butt with the left hand).

This picture is from Mithus grandmothers house, she cooked a lunch for us all, I mean how lovely isn´t that!

Our hotel in Erode

Although Erode is not a city with a lot of tourists, I found a nice resort with swimming pool!

Since we were probably the only foreigners that have ever visited that resort, me, a woman in bikini, was quite a sightseeing. Suddenly the surroundings around the swimming pool had a lot of issues including gardeners, cleaners, construction builders, receptionists, chefs… everyone needed to be around there…..

Next up is a blogpost about our company trip to Bandipur. Bandipur is a national tiger reserve and national park, that we went to with all the office from Erode, for a whole weekend.