Visting the Indian Store at Baton Rouge :-)

As part of the extended help from ISA ( Indian Student Association ) at LSU Baton Rouge ( BR ), we ( Priyanka and I ) were offered a ride to visit the Indian Stores at BR. Rahul ( a Doc Student ) and Poonam ( a PhD Student) drove us to the A-Z and India Fashion stores. The stores are located about 20+Kms from our University Campus.

At A-Z we can find all the MTR's, Priya's, Badsha's food items including the Indian Grams, toiletries etc.....We doing our $ to Rs conversion somehow ended up spending around 123.13$ there. I was glad I could convince Priyanaka on most items I wanted to buy (Ghee, some Grams, beaten Rice) :-).

The India Fashion store is not that big and flexible in food items like the A-Z, but it had Indian Salwars, Kurtas, Dhotis, Raymond Shirt Materials, Rakhi's, Mehandi's to name a few. We got Frozen Chapathis there. What caught my eyes were the Gol Gappa Puris and the pani puri masala. While leaving the store, we decided when we visit this store next time we ought to get them!!!!!

On the way back to the campus, our eyes caught up with lovely colorful Hot Air Balloons. We decided to barge in and see what is happening. It was the Hot Air Balloon Championship (6th -8th August 2010). There were families who had come with enough accessories to spend the next 2 days in the field as well. Was surprised looking at the strong family bonding here, as people had come with their families rather than just friends. As part of the inauguration event, all the contestants were asked to ignite their engines as much as possible on a count of 10. And man, that was an awesome view to see; so many colorful balloons lit up at dusk!!!! reminded me of Deepalvali back home, but this was more pollutant free :-).

Finally, after close to 3 hours of roaming we reached back to the apartment, unloaded the items and hogged the frozen chapathis we got with the ready to eat curries :-)

Hope I visit the Indian store soon, to get sweets, savouries and chaats and I hope I dont when I think of the cost involved!!! ;-)