The first 3 weeks

We have no family in Bangalore. But we do have some very good friends and some cousins.
With the help of one of our friends, we had reserved a corporate apartment (serviced apartment) here, had a cab to pick us up from the airport and also a few other taxi service numbers handy.
The stay at the corporate apartment turned out to be very comfortable and we were glad we did not act miserly. It was a 2 BHK apartment with full power and water back-up and had a washing machine, fully equipped kitchen, some basic grocery items, fridge, TV, High speed Internet connection, phone line etc. The home owner was nice enough to even provide us with a pre-paid calling card which we used until we got our own connection.

It was really nice to meet all the friends after a long gap.

We realized that the 2 things we needed to work on immediately were-
a) Buying a car
b) Looking for a house/ apartment for rent

We had already made up our mind that we will live in an apartment only. We knew transition was not easy so we wanted to take it easy for the first year and make our lives as comfortable as we could.
The apartment decision was for a few basic reasons-
1. Security
2. Water and power back up
3. Community/ neighborhood
4. Ease in getting services

And, we are very happy that we made the right choice.

My husband started visiting car dealerships and test driving some cars. After we zero-ed on the car, we had to negotiate with the different dealerships. Life became a lot easier once we had our own car. You can call cabs but it is not as flexible and ofcourse, it costs money.

As for the house hunting, I google-d for some property dealers and started calling them up. We had and appointment with about 2 property dealers and saw about 20 apartments. However, we liked the very first one we saw of them all and decided to get things fixed and move in as soon as we could.

Indian apartments don't come in a perfect conditions as their US counter parts. People who left the apartment, leave it dirty. Really dirty and the home owners dont care to get it cleaned. So the appeal of the property is not great.
We also had to get many things fixed and I spent 2 full days cleaning the bathrooms and the kitchen to make the apartment live-able.
We had called a maid also for helping me. But believe me, you are better of without a maid sometimes. Getting things done is not at all easy here. Well, she did clean, but as if her hand had no bones and the the bone less body had no energy.
And since I was very used to doing things myself, I decided to do physical hard work to get results instead of finishing your brain, get annoyed and still not get any results.

Besides housing and car, we had to open a bank account, get a locker, get 2 sim cards, apply for landline, apply for internet connection, find maids, driver, etc. The list is endless.