In the late 1980s, I embarked on a "small" project in India to obtain a "bit" of comparative data on Indian women in science and engineering. At that time, there was little cross-cultural research on the scientific gender gap outside of the United States or Europe. As a cultural anthropologist, I initially envisaged a short-term, small-scale, ethnographic study of college students and science-related academic decision-making on one Indian college campus. Yet as I got farther into the project, I realized I would have to drastically revise my original research plan. The result was a multi-phase, multi-method, long-term, and large-scale project involving two trips to India and expansion of the study to the pre-college level. This case study explores some problems that arose, the solutions and revised research plan I devised, and suggests some useful strategies for doing productive research in unfamiliar cultures, especially in less wealthier, developing countries. [This content is provided in the format of an e-book.]