Hyderabad

Ahh Hyderabad, I can’t say I’m too sorry to see it go. Although it’s a beautiful city, my experience ever these last four days has been less than perfect.

The trip started out okay, and I was very much looking forward to a break from Madurai. We arrived on Saturday night, and I immediately felt the effects of a larger Indian city. Hyderabad has 5.5 million which is nothing in camparison to Bombay’s 16 million, but is much larger than Madurai’s 1.2. The traffic and pollution were incredible and it’s become a serious problem for Hyderabad as they estimate as additional 10,000 cars are being added to the streets each month! Also, the proverty was much more appalling and at every street light, beggars are at the window. I realized that I have been incredibly spoiled by the Aravind guesthouse, as LV Prasad’s was musty and inhabited with cockroaches.

We turned in early as Mr Nagarajan had planned an early and long day of sightseeing on Sunday. Mr Nagarajan sits on the board of LV Prasad which is another hospital system offering eye care in India. He is also a board member for Seva and so very connected with both Aravind, as well. He lives in Hyderabad so he was very much looking forward to showing us all around. Since his wife was out of town, he stayed with us at the guesthouse, too, which is actually part of the hospital and so you have to walk through the outpatient clinic to get there. I think that the guesthouse is mostly used for doctors.

Sunday morning we got up early to have breakfast at the house of a former Aravind employee who’s now working at LVP. After that we set out on our tour. Unfortunately, it was raining, but we were well equipped with our own personal driver and tour guide (Nagarajan). We first went to the Golcanda Fort. A beautiful 16th century fort that was incredibly impressive. We were initially thrilled to find out that there was a festival going on that day, and there were people all over the fort, even though it was raining. It didn’t take us long to figure out, though, that almost every group had a goat with them, and that sacrificing that goat was part of the celebration. There was goat blood all the way up the steps to the top of the fort. Watching one goat with its half severed head and legs kicking violently, I decided to reconsider my vegetarianism. It was very hard to watch, I’ll admit, and the image is still with me.

After the fort, we ventured to the Salar Jung Museum which although by Western standards was average did have a notable collection of wood and ivory carvings. The biggest draw was a large grandfather clock that had a miniature woodchopper and with each hour a miniature person would come out of a little door at the top of the clock to ring the bell. We went for the 12 o’clock showing and I would say that there was at least a crowd of a 500. It was pretty funny – there were big screens to show the action going on at the top of the clock and with each ring the crowd oohed and ahhed. Kristi, Sandra, and I kind of just looked at each other wondering what the big deal was – but it was very cute.

After the museum we headed to the Charminar, which is the most famous landmark in Hyderabad, and it literally means the four minarets. It’s next to a huge bazaar which after our morning was a bit difficult to navigate. We almost got run over twice as we tried to cross the roundabout of the Charminar to access different parts of the bazaar (people will not stop for you! – and they have made at least 8 lanes out of two), and the numbers of people yelling “Madam, Madam” and shh’ing at us to look at their goods were incredibly disconcerting. A few minutes of it was all we could stand and we headed home for nap time. I ended up sleeping 2.5 hours, and so I already had a feeling that I might be coming down with something, but we had a lovely dinner on the side of the lake, Hussain Sagar. There’s a 17m Buddha statue in the middle, that during transport to the middle of the lake in 1990 sunk killing 8 people. It was salvaged and restored to its place in 1992.

I spent most of the rest of the night my bathroom deathly ill. It was horrible, and I spent the entire next day in bed. Fortunately, Kristi, Sandra, and Nagarajan were there to take care of me. They were able to send up toast, and water, and even a doctor. Of course, within minitues of food being in my room – the cockroaches reappeared. Well, I had a feeling that it would happen sooner or later. I could tell that they were all really worried about me, and hoping that I would be much better before they had to leave the following day. After the day of rest I felt much better and Tuesday I joined Sandra and Kristi for a couple of hours of shopping before their plane. Of course, with all of the traffic in Hyderabad, we spent about 30 min shopping and 1.5 hours driving. We only got to spend 10 min at our favorite stop – Kalanjali – which has all kinds of the handicrafts and clothing with none of the hassle.

Another thing that I noticed about Hyderabad were there were so many women in burka’s as they have a much larger Muslim population than farther south. They were on motorcycles, shopping at Kalanjali, paying a few rupees to have their weight estimated at the museum, and eating ice cream at the boardwalk.

I'm sorry to see Sandra and Kristi go, we had a lot of fun, and it was great getting to know them better. I'm pretty excited to have Steph come tomorrow, though, and I'm looking forward to getting to Goa.