India trip

My 3rd weekend in India I decided to head up to Delhi. A friend of mine from New York who is originally from there happened to be in town at the same time so it was a great opportunity to visit a new place after hanging around Hyderabad for a couple of weeks. When some of the other expats heard I was going they decided to come along so it ended up being the 4 of us traveling together.

We left on Friday night after work, and with the flight being delayed a bit didn't land in Delhi until after midnight. My first impression of Delhi was that it was fairly similar to Hyderabad, except much more polluted. The air pollution in Hyderabad is noticeable when you first arrive and the haze is always visible in the distance but Delhi was much worse. I could taste the difference in the air and developed a cough that stayed with me the entire time we were in town.

When we got off the plane a driver was there to meet us and take us to the hotel, which should have been only 5 minutes away. The reason it's a good idea to arrange for a driver through the hotel is that if you pick one at the airport they will often try to scam you and take you to the wrong place in the hopes you'll stay there instead and they get some sort of kickback from their friends running the other place. This is pretty common behavior for both taxi and auto-rickshaw drivers, they will try to steer you toward all sorts of places where they have arrangements with the owners, including hotels, restaurants and shops.

Although our driver was hired by the hotel it actually turned out this guy had some alternate plans than taking us to our destination. As we were driving down one of the dark roads we noticed a huge Krishna statue (which I unfortunately never photographed) and right beside it the sign for our hotel. We told the driver that we had arrived but he continued going saying this was the wrong place and our hotel was further down the road. We ended up driving around for another 20 minutes or more, stopping by to ask directions from some pretty shady looking characters, before finally convincing him to turn around and take us back to the big Krishna statue where we saw the sign earlier.

We finally managed to get back to the right place without further incident and got settled in at the hotel which turned out to be really nice. The showers in particular were fantastic. The water was HOT and the pressure just right, it was the best shower I had taken since I'd gotten to India. However, before going to our individual rooms we decided to end the night with a couple of beers which turned out to be trickier than expected. Apparently, room service only had 2 bottles of Kingfisher for the four of us but, luckily, these were the large 16oz bottles so it was just enough for 4 glasses of beer after all. After drinking our half-beers and chatting a bit about the weirdness with the taxi we finally split up and headed for bed as we had lots to do the following day before meeting up with my friend that Saturday night.

We got up on Saturday around 9am to figure out what to do for the rest of the day since we hadn't actually made any specific plans. After noticing an area called Connaught Place in our guide book my traveling companions, who were all from Dublin, decided we'd have to go check it out (Connaught is apparently also a province in Ireland). Driving through Delhi that weekend was actually a bit interesting because it was the weekend before Republic Day so there was a lot of extra security and you could see military guys with big guns lined up along many of the streets.

When we got to Connaught Place we let our driver go since there were many points of interest within close proximity and we'd all been dying to try out one of the auto-rickshaws. Connaught Place turned out to be kind of a large plaza of Western style shops and restaurants with plenty of tourists idling around and local street vendors selling various junk, most notably little round chess and backgammon sets. God knows why anybody would want one of these but there were literally dozens of very pushy guys trying to sell them. We decided to regroup at one of the cafes in the area and figure out what to do with the rest of the afternoon.

Our initial plan was to visit the National Rail Museum but then we noticed there was giant astronomical observatory called the Jantar Mantar nearby. The others had already actually seen the one in Jaipur but we decided to go check it out anyway. We could have probably walked as it wasn't terribly far but this was a perfect opportunity for all of us to finally get a ride in an auto-rickshaw. We actually ended up spending quite a bit of time in one that day riding back and forth from one area to another and it was quite an experience. My companions were cramped into the backseat while I was hanging on for dear life in the front seat, one arm around the driver while the other was holding on to the frame where door would normally be on another type of vehicle. Jantar Mantar was a pretty interesting experience, I took lots of pictures so I'll skip any further impressions.

After we got through looking at the giant astronomical observation structures we decided it was time for lunch so we went in search of another auto-rickshaw to take us to some place to eat. The guy we ended up hiring was pretty insistent about taking us to a particular restaurant he greatly recommended and since we didn't really know of anything in the area we went with his suggestion. As it turned out he took us to a complete tourist trap area where he obviously received some sort of reward for bringing more customers. The food turned out to be pretty good however so we weren't too upset in the end and let him take us to a temple he recommended after lunch.

This turned out to be a Sikh temple which allows any and all visitors, provided they cover their head and take off their shoes. After leaving our shoes at the reception area and getting a little orange head cover we proceeded inside. Our guide/driver told us it was even ok to take pictures though none of us actually felt particularly comfortable with acting like obnoxious picture-taking tourists inside the temple itself. It was very interesting to see the inside of a real Sikh temple with people sitting around on the floor, presumably praying, and the "altar" area in the middle with musicians playing and chanting, according to our guide without stopping the entire day. After checking out the insides of the temple itself our driver led us to the adjacent kitchen area where people were being fed for free every day. Sikhs don't believe in caste or class differences so everyone was welcome and would be seated on the floor together and served the same food, prepared in the same large room by volunteers.

The trip to the Sikh temple was very cool and completely unplanned, I don't think any of us knew anything about that religion before we went in so it was a learning experience as well. Afterward we still had some daylight left so we took the auto-rickshaw over to the Gandhi cremation garden. The garden was pretty but nothing of too much interest for sight-seers, and we had to once again take off our shoes and walk around barefoot in order to get in. After taking some pictures and walking around for a bit we decided to head back to the hotel as it's been a pretty long day and we were still going out that night to meet up with my friend.

When we got back to the hotel the others decided to rest up for a bit while I went to check out the hotel bar/lounge. This place turned out to be more of a club, with strobe lights and a DJ playing various Indian dance music, though it was fairly empty and not many people dancing. There was actually one group of about 20 people (only 3 or 4 of them women) who would get up periodically to dance so the dance floor went from crowded to completely empty depending on the song. I stood around sipping my beer for awhile until a good song came on and most of them got back on the dance floor. I really wished the ratio was a bit better since it was a little weird dancing along with so many guys but I figured this was as good as it was going to get so I got out on the dance floor as well. I ended up jumping around to some funky Indian music for the next 30 or 40 minutes until it was time to go back and get the others so we could head out again.

Two of my companions actually decided to stay in that night so it was only the two of us that went out to meet up with my friend at a lounge he recommended called the "Laid Back Waters" which was located at the Qutab Hotel across town from where we were staying. This place turned out to be very cool and a great place to hang out and have a couple of drinks. We were both wishing we had a place like this back in Hyderabad, or even New York, since I don't think I know a place like that back home either. My Delhi friend also brought along another friend of his, who turned out to be very cool as well, and the four of us ended up having a great time just sitting around and talking over some drinks.

The next day we planned on going to the Red Fort. We had actually planned on going there on Saturday but our driver told us it would be closed due to the preparations for Republic Day but should be open again on Sunday. When we finally go there, however, we were disappointed to find out that it was closed again so we were only able to see the fort's outside wall. Luckily, there was a huge bazaar right outside and my friend recommended a really good restaurant called Karim's the night before which was supposed to be right nearby. After consulting the trusty guide book we found where we had to go and took off in what we figured should be the right direction.

We ended up wondering around for a bit, stopping by at the Tibetan refugee market, and walking past all kinds of little shops, from spare auto parts to butcher shops with sheep heads layed out in the front. After awhile we finally found Karim's which was hiding inside a little alley off of one of the smaller streets near a large mosque. The food at this place was excellent just like my friend said and the layout of the place so unusual that it was worth the long walk just to see it. To get in you had to go through a little alley as I said before, which opened up into a larger alley and the restaurant had seating areas in a few of the buildings surrounding the open space, with the kitchen located in another of the buildings completely visible from the alley, so the whole place had a very open feel about it.

After we finished our meal and got back out to the street we decided to check out the mosque that was right across the street. The admission wasn't free however, and once again we had to remove our shoes in order to go in, but the space inside was very impressive and it was well worth it. I also managed to get a few more shots of the Red Fort which wasn't too far away. We walked back to our car through the huge bazaar sprawled out between the mosque and the Red Fort and headed back to Connaught Place for some tea at the cafe we went to the previous day before taking our flight back to Hyderabad that evening.

All in all, it was a pretty successful weekend trip, I got to see a lot of sights and experience an Indian city besides Hyderabad. It was also great to see somebody from back home half a world away.

The next day I was still recovering from getting sick the night before at Paradise so I wasn't feeling so great, but we had already made plans to go visit one of our co-workers at her house for the Pongal kite festival. Despite the fact that I started out the day feeling sick it actually turned into a very nice relaxing afternoon of hanging out on the rooftop, eating great home-made Indian food and flying kites.

Flying kites here turned out to be a slightly different affair from what I was used to. The kites are fairly small and require a lot of special skill to get them into the air. In addition, you are flying it from a rooftop which doesn't allow much room to run and gain altitude, and if I didnd't know any better I'd say there was nowhere near enough wind for kite flying that day. However, there were thousands of kites in the air and none of the local residents seemed to have much trouble either flying the kites or getting into kite fights. That's right, the kite-flying festival isn't just about peacefully flying kites, it's about using your kite to cut down as many of the other kites as you can. In order to facilitate this, ground up glass is actually added to the kite string making it a hazard for both other kites as well as the fingers of the person controlling the kite.

None of the expats, myself included, actually managed to get our kites too far off the ground but our driver (same guy who took us to the Monkey Temple) was extremely impressive. He was out in the hot sun for hours and not only managed to get his kites up and flying, he even managed to get into a few kite fights and cut down 4 "enemy" kites while losing 3 of ours. I actually had one moment where I thought I finally got lucky and did the right combination of maneuvers to get my kite airborne but just as I was feeling confident that my kite was going to finally fly my string snapped and the kite went spiraling down into the alley below.

As the afternoon was winding down, the sick feeling from the night before finally left my body and I was able to dig in and enjoy the excellent home-made Indian food. I can no longer remember the name of the dishes but it was extremely satisflying, all the more so since by this point I hadn't eaten anything in nearly 24 hours.

The rest of the weekend felt pretty lazy, hanging out back at the apartments playing pool and eating out at a couple local restaurants. I should mention that we have the most amazing pool table here, the surface is perfect and the pockets are European style so the corners are much sharper on the corner pockets and wider on the side pockets. The cue points are also much thinner than I'm used to in the States so it takes a lot more skill to play well and it's much more satisfying to actually sink your intended shot. There is also an incredible snooker table in the pool room, the only problem is the pool room closes at 10pm which doesn't give much time to enjoy it after dinner.

After having a pretty relaxing weekend a few of us decided to go out Sunday night and head down to the Golconda Fort to check out the light and sound show. I actually meant to visit the Fort during the day and take some pictures but we got there just as the sun was setting so it was pretty difficult to photograph anything.

The light and sound show itself turned out to be a very interesting experience. We were seated in an area of the Fort which, had there been light, would have allowed us the view of several structures within the Fort which were for the moment invisible in the darkness. As the show began the narrator, a very popular local actor called the Big B who has an excellent voice, began a story of the how the Fort came to be built and some of the notable things that have happened within its walls. As the story progressed, lights came on illuminating the various structures, some at least a quarter of a mile away, fountains turned on and off and special sound effects punctuated the different aspects of the story. All in all it was a pretty interesting and original experience, though from what I understand light and sound shows like this one aren't unusual at the other forts around the country.

Ahh, biryani in Paradise, sounds good right? That's what I thought as well. Hyderabad is actually famous for its biryani, and this restaurant called Paradise is supposed to serve the best in town, according to one of my co-workers anyway. Unfortunately, my experience was pretty much as far from heavenly as you can imagine. But this story really begins on the night before that fateful excursion...

That Thursday night began innocently enough with a few of us trying to go out for dinner. As it happened everybody cancelled except me and another expat from the Dublin office so it was just the two of us for dinner. We went to this place called "Fusion 9" where I had an excellent medium-rare steak which was all the more amazing for the fact that it's pretty well impossible to find beef in this city. We ordered some local wine, identified only as "wine" on the menu, however that was a mistake. The taste of this stuff can only be approximated by rinsing a dirty sock into a glass. Long story short, it was completely foul but we ended up drinking two glasses each anyway. Good wine, or wine period, is somewhat rare 'round these parts as well.

After the excellent meal, only marginally tainted by the foulness of the wine, we went upstairs to the Fusion 9 bar area. It seems to be a pretty popular thing here to have multi-level restaurants, with different themes on different floors. Anyway, the bar was a fairly cool lounge type place with a DJ playing some pretty good trance. Despite it being Thursday night, which is normally a go-out night here as well, the place was completely empty, except the two of us. (I later found out this was because if was the beginning of the Pongal festival and most people stayed home to eat with their families that day.) We hung out at the bar and had a couple of Kingfishers, which apparently taste much better in India than they do in the States. After hanging around this place for a bit and chatting it up we went back to our apartments, and this is where trouble really began.

Our apartments have these balconies, and the fridges are constantly stocked with beer so it doesn't take much effort to have a small impromptu party. My co-worker, who'd also just arrived a couple of days after me, brought along a rather sizeable bottle of gin and in addition to beer our fridges contain large quantities of Tropicana orange juice boxes. It didn't take us long to put two and two together and we were having a pretty good time just chatting and having a few more drinks on the balcony. Before we knew it the sun was coming up over the haze of the polluted Hyderabad sky and we were still up and awake, having consumed half a liter of gin and countless tropicana orange juice boxes. As I mentioned before this was a Thursday night and we still had to "get up" for work soon.

Needless to say, that day at work was no picnic. I had an interview at 11am, which I managed OK since it was a phone screen but by 2:30pm my body gave out and I had to go back to the room for some rest. I actually felt fine, just really tired, so I promised a few of the girls from the office that we'd gone out with earlier in the week that we'd come out to Paradise for some biryani with them later that day. A mistake I would live to regret.

I went home and got some rest and actually felt OK before heading out to the restaurant. However, the trouble with our location in Hyderabad is that the city center, and most interesting destinations along with it, are about a 40 minute drive away. Having spent 40 minutes on windy, poorly paved roads I began feeling extremely car-sick and nauseous. The terrible feeling didn't pass when I got out of the car however. I took a little breather outside but the fresh air wasn't doing the trick. My body was pretty wrecked from the night before and the car ride to the restaurant seemed to have used up whatever strength I had left.

I ended up ordering some lamb biryani which looked delicious when it arrived. Unfortunately, any thought of placing food in my mouth at that stage caused violent spasms in my stomach. Nevertheless, I managed a few bites of the biryani and a couple of the other, undoubtedly delicious, things on the table in front of me. Everybody had a good time poking fun at the fact that I was just sitting there staring at the food but that experience in Paradise was the closest thing to Hell I could imagine at the time. I was feeling utterly wretched.

The ride home was even worse. I managed to keep it together until we dropped off our colleague but finally lost it and regurgitated whatever food I had that day onto the side of the road. I continued feeling sick well into the afternood of the next day. In retrospect, I blame the whole incident on taking my malaria pill after consuming alcohol and not on the drinking and staying up all night per se. In fact, I actually had another similar incident where I got extremely sick a couple of weeks later under similar circumstances (but with far less alcohol) and feel pretty certain that the malaria meds just don't play well with liquor. Anyway, lesson learned! Follow the directions on your prescription medication and heed the warnings!

With so much stuff happening while I've been in India, I unfortunately haven't had the chance to keep up with this blog as much as I meant to. I'll be going back to New York on Friday and I still haven't gotten around to finishing the story from the first weekend I spent here over 3 weeks ago. I just returned from a trip to Goa, where I spent the last 4 days, and I was visiting Delhi last weekend so there's a lot to write about. Many of the things that happened before those trips aren't so fresh in my mind so after the Monkey Temple story I'll be skipping a few of the posts I initially intended to write to make sure I finish telling the major highlights before I have to go back home. To keep things chronological, I'll go back to where I last left off...

My third day in India started out early, for me anyway, at around 9am. One of our drivers recommended we visit a temple not too far from the city which he described to us as the "Monkey Temple". This was not because the temple has anything to do with Hanuman, the monkey god, but more due to the fact that there were hundreds of real-life banana-loving monkeys living all around the temple grounds. A few of the expats already planned the trip before I ever arrived but when I heard they were going it was hard to resist tagging along (I love monkeys!)

The trip was supposed to be roughtly 60km, or about 40 miles, which should not have taken very long with light Sunday morning traffic. We set off early thinking we'll be back by lunchtime, but that's not exactly how it worked out in the end. On the way there I finally stopped by a bank and got some local money and our driver stopped by the monkey bank (a.k.a. roadside fruit stand) and got some bananas for the monkeys. Despite the light traffic it took over 2 hours to get to the temple which probably means it was more like 100km instead of 60. The drive was pretty interesting however, as it was the first time I got to see Indian countryside instead of the crowded city streets.

The temple turned out to be located on top of a pretty large hill / small mountain, with a village at the bottom of the hill and a small town contained inside the temple walls. Once we got up to the top it took a while to drive around the crowded streets to find parking. We were on the lookout for monkeys but didn't see any until we finally got out of the car in the lot behind the temple. The first monkey was hanging out on the fence near the parking lot so when we spotted him our driver got the bananas and we went over for a closer look.

As we got closer, it became clear this wasn't the cute animal we were expecting to see. This monkey was pretty big, big enough to be a little intimidating, and missing a foot, which didn't seem to bother him very much but made him look even scarier. Our driver was undeterred and decided to start feeding this beast. I always thought the fact that monkeys love bananas was kind of a stereotype but it turns out it's actually true. Once this monkey saw the huge wad of bananas he got pretty excited and came right up to us asking for more. To get rid of him we had to stash the bananas in the back of a random guy's car in the lot and head up to the temple to look for more, hopefully less intimidating, monkey friends.

The temple was actually very interesting in its own right so I took lots of pictures. And it wasn't long until we ran into more monkeys. This is where the trip went a little sour. Our driver was really excited about making sure we got our money's worth, so to speak, so he decided to do everything he could to ensure we saw as many monkeys as possible. The afternoon was pretty hot, and the monkeys were mostly relaxing in the shade, not being very active, so he decided to get them going by throwing bananas all over the place to get them to come out. As I mentioned before, this was a temple, and everyone else there besides us was there for religious purposes, not to see monkeys run around and grab bananas. Consequently, people were a little upset that he was throwing bananas on top of tents where they were trying to escape the afternoon sun and we felt very awkward since he was doing all this out of some misguided desire to entertain us. We actually tried to get him to stop and told him several times that we've seen enough monkeys but he was difficult to convince.

Luckily, after awhile our driver went off somewhere and we were left on our own for awhile to wander about and explore the area. I took lots of pictures while we were there so I won't go into much detail trying to describe it again. Since the place ended up being so far away, we naturally didn't get back by lunch, so we ate on the way back at a small Indian restaurant at the bottom of the hill.

Pretty much every restaurant in Hyderabad is actually an Indian restaurant. Even if they serve other cuisines there is usually a lot of Indian choices on the menu. The Indian food here is pretty amazing as well. I hate to say it but it's much much better than back in New York. I was a bit worried that after a while I would get tired of eating Indian but even though I've had it practically every day I still want more. I will definitely have to find some quality Indian food when I get back home.

Well, that's it for my first weekend in India, I finally managed to write it all down! It was a pretty amazing time and still only the beginning.

It's hard to believe this is the 7th post about my India trip and I'm still not done with day 2! That's right, the events in this post are still from last Saturday, my second day in Hyderabad.

So, we were actually in a hurry to wrap up in Mebaz because there was a pretty large get-together of both expats and locals from the office later that evening at the Bottles And Chimney Club. We were trying to get there by 9pm but with me going crazy buying up everything I could in Mebaz we didn't make it until nearly 10pm. Walking into this place was a bit shocking. I had just spent all day taking in very foreign sights and was finally getting adjusted to the Indian scenery so I was completely unprepared for...

...a completely ordinary looking Western club!

It actually felt a little surreal, like I woke up from this weird India dream and was all of a sudden back home in New York. I opened up the drinks menu, and lo and behold, all the same mixed drinks you find back home - cosmos, mojitos, you name it. They even had white russians! Naturally, that's what I ordered, completely forgetting where I was for the moment. However, the white russian turned out to be a bad move for multiple reasons. First of all, they made it with some kind of chocolate syrup all along the sides of the glass which is just completely perverse. It still tasted mostly OK but as I got toward the bottom half of the glass it finally dawned on me that I was in India and there was ice in my drink. Indian ice is made from Indian tap water, which was now melting into my drink. Just as the thought crossed my mind I got a funny feeling in my stomach.

I'm still not sure how much of it was psychosomatic and how much of it was the ice water actually churning my insides but I completely panicked and didn't touch the rest of my drink. After a trip to the restroom and realizing I wasn't actually going to die I started to feel a bit better and was able to enjoy the rest of the night. Unfortunately, the music they happened to be playing that day was pretty much completely atrocious. I really wish we had gone on a Friday night when they play house and trance, but that was not meant to be. What I ended up having to dance to was a bunch of strange dance remixes of no-longer-popular songs along with some local dance pop mixed by the most incompetent DJ since DJ AM. Ugh, but I still had a good time and danced up a storm!

Even more weird than the terrible music, the strangest thing that happened was when at 12am they announced last call for drinks. This alone I could excuse, I don't really need to be drunk to dance and have a good time, but at 12:15am they announced last song! The music was off and the people in mass exodus from the club at 12:30! Somebody mentioned a trance club nearby our apartments that was supposedly open till later, and I was really in a mood to dance to something good, but nobody really seemed into going and I was still feeling a bit reluctant to go off on my own so I hopped in the car back to the apartment.

Besides, it was time to get back since we had to get up early the next day for our trip to the Monkey Temple!

So I finally get around to writing about my first trip to Mebaz! Feels very appropriate since I just got back from my fitting and all the stuff I ordered is going to be ready in a few more days. But back to the original story...

After spending the day at the museum and visiting the Charminar we headed off to this place called Mebaz which is a kind of an upscale clothing store where many of the expats go to get tailor-made suits and shirts as well as traditional outfits like kurtas and saris. When I came in I was only planning on buying one suit since I heard it would only cost $150 - $200, which is a ludicrously cheap amount by American standards. However, I ended up falling under the spell of the so-called hypnotic tailor and got way more than I initially anticipated.

They showed me a few samples of cloth and I picked out a very nice looking dark blue for my first suit. I really wasn't going to order anything else but they kept laying out different kinds of fabrics and offering to make me more "trousers" (haha, funny word) and shirts. I resisted as long as I could but there were many of them and only two of us, plus they brought out drinks for us to sip while making our selections. It became impossible to resist so I started picking up some shirts along with the other expat who brought me there. He was there specifically for more shirts since he only got a couple on his previous visit. And when I say shirts here I mean fabric from which the shirts would be made, not off-the-rack kind of things. The fabrics were actually very nice as well, various Armani and other designer materials. All in all I ended up with 2 suits (went back for a black pin-stripe as well), 12 shirts, and 6 "trousers" (haha, that word cracks me up). I also got 3 very nice belts and tried on a large number of shoes but decided not to get any of those there. The shoes in Mebaz cost about as much as they do in the States ($130+) and didn't feel nearly as nice as their American equivalents.

The surprise came in the end when I went to the counter to pay the bill. Throughout the course of this buying orgy I kept asking the guys helping us how much all these things were going to cost but they kept telling me, "hang on, we'll tell you in a minute." The information never materialized until the end, however, when all the fabric was cut and it was too late to send anything back. It's funny seeing 57,000 on your receipt, and if I bought all these things in New York the pricetag would certainly have been several thousand dollars. Luckily, these were only rupees, but even so, that many rupees adds up to a lot of "real" money as well. My credit card company didn't seem to mind however, which is actually a bit disappointing, I would expect them to at least flag any large purchases made half-way around the world...I'm not worried about the money however, I figure I will not need to do any more shopping for formal wear for several years to come unless my body shape changes in some drastic manner.

As I said before, I actually had my fitting earlier this evening. The shirt they gave me to try seemed to fit beautifully while the suit and pants needed a little modification. But it will all be ready some time next week and I'll finally have a pretty respectable wardrobe to my name, which is pretty exciting! I actually bought a couple party shirts while I was there earlier today and tried on some kurtas and other traditional gear but none of it seemed very pleasing. I do really want to find a nice comfortable Indian outfit to bring home before I go back that I could wear around the house. Well, that was that for Mebaz, or at least for the time being. I'm still going back there next week to pick up the final products and probably won't be able to resist getting a couple more random items..

After spending all morning walking around taking pictures of my new surroundings I met up with another expat from Dublin and a couple of people from the office to go to the Salar Jung Museum to see the Nizam's Jewels, a collection of gold, diamond, pearl, and other precious stones and materials worth an estimated US $4.4 billion.

The jewels exhibit is kept in a separate wing of the museum behind a huge vault door, with lots of armed guards and security checkpoints outside so when you go inside you choose either the normal museum tour or the jewels. There is a separate line, separate tickets, etc. Everyone I was with raved about the museum's normal exhibits but since the jewels are only here temporarily, on loan from Delhi, and everyone else had already been to museum before, we went to see the jewels.

Buying the tickets to the exhibition was actually the first time I was exposed to an interesting local phenomenon that seems to be very prevalent here. In the U.S. tickets are usually divided into categories based on age, so you will have child tickets, adult tickets and senior tickets. In India, ticket prices are divided into two categories - low price for Indians, high price for foreigners. The sign above the counter for the jewel exhibit actually said, "Indian: Rs 50, Non-Indian: Rs 500", which is quite a markup. Granted 50 rupees is only about $1 and 500 just over $10 which isn't a horribly big deal, the notion that you pay a different price based on race is a hard one to swallow, and apparently this applies to train and plane tickets as well as local attractions so it's a fairly wide-spread practice.

Interestingly enough most of the other expats I spoke with don't seem to mind this blatant form of racial discrimination. I took it in stride as well, after all being a Westerner here pretty much guarantees a near-celebrity status treatment at most places, being waved through police checkpoints, welcomed in places you might normally have to wait in line or need special invitation, etc. The result is clearly much more "positive" discrimation, and the prices here are already so low that even with the foreigner markup things are still cheaper than back home.
However, the positive treatment is easier to accept due to the fact that it's usually done on a very personal level, people just seem more interested in you which is to be expected due to the fact that you have an unusual appearance from what they're used to. The separate prices on the other hand are an institutionalized way of treating people differently based on race which is not a far leap from "separate but equal" facilities to my Americanized mind. I suppose technically it's based on Indian citizenship but in reality no one checks your passport unless you look a certain way. Anyway, back to the Nizam's Jewels exhibit...

After we bought our separate but equal tickets, checked our cameras and cell phones into a locker (no pictures of the jewels are permitted), and went through at least two separate pat-down sessions to ensure we weren't armed, we finally made it into the first part of the exhibition. The main part of the exhibit, the jewel room, is a large square room with a huge vault door as the only point of entry and the jewel display cases along the walls. People are let in, 50 or so at a time, the door is locked and they get 30 minutes to go around the room and look at the jewelry. However, before you get to see the main event you get to wait in another room which contains a few manequins wearing traditional clothing and glass jewerly and several dozen posters along the walls with pictures of the Nizam rulers (to whom the jewels belonged) along with descriptions of their reign and accomplishments. Going around this room and reading the posters was the first, but definitely not last, time here that I realized just how little is taught about this country in the United States. I recognized absolutely none of the places or names mentioned there, despite the fact that they made up an important part of Indian history, at least judging from the size of the territory these guys ruled.

After waiting for some time in this "waiting room" we finally made it to the vault. However, just as we got to the door the vault became filled so we were looking at another 30 minutes of standing around, this time with nothing to do since we've already looked at all the posters. That was until the guards noticed me and the other expat and ushered us in despite the fact that it wasn't yet our turn (all our Indian companions got in as well). That alone was pretty strange, but in addition to getting to go in out of turn, once inside we were allowed to roam the room freely and look at whatever display case we wanted at any given time while the Indian visitors were made to go around in an organized manner from one display case to the next. I guess maybe it was only fair, seeing as how we paid 10 times more in admission than anyone else there, but it was definitely an example of the "positive" discrimination we receive here.

Overall, I actually wasn't that impressed by the exhibit. I supposed it's hard to process the fact that the little shiny things you're looking at are worth a collective $4.4 billion. The Jacob Diamon, 3rd largest in the world, was pretty impressive however. They had it mounted on a spinning pedestal with a light source above so it looked a like a not-so-little disco ball.

After our 30 minutes of gawking were up, we split up with our Indian companions and went down to the Charminar, a large historical monument/mosque, surrounded by a very lively and crowded market. It was getting late in the day so the mosque was closed but we took a bunch of pictures, including a very strange one of a billboard with George W. Bush and a bunch of Arabic writing, which I'm now dying to get translated. It was a pretty interesting place, and the traffic in the surrounding area was completely insane, but after staying for a short while we headed off to Mebaz, a local tailor shop that's extremely popular with all the expats, to get some tailor-made suits!

My second day here happened to be a Saturday. I had already met a few of the other expats the day before at work and had some rough plans for the day but due to all the time zone changes I ended up getting up somewhat early with nothing to do until early afternoon. I went down to the "food" apartment to get some breakfast which turned out to be quite excellent. I know I already mentioned our chefs but they really do deserve a lot of credit for making really tasty stuff at pretty much any hour of the day. This breakfast was unusual in that it was traditional Indian food instead of the toast, pancakes or omelet we normally get. I realized later that I actually got pretty lucky to get it. Another of the expats made it there first, who happened to be from India but working in the States, and ordered it for the two of us. Unfortunately, he went home the next day and when I tried ordering the "Indian" breakfast a couple of days later I still got toast and eggs so knowing the language definitely helps here despite the fact that you can normally pretty much get by with English.

After breakfast I still had a few hours to kill before meeting up with some of the others to go see the Nizam's Jewels on display at a local museum so with nothing better to do I went walking around the apartment complex, exploring and taking pictures of the sights and the people I ran into. The pictures pretty much speak for themselves, however it was very interesting to actually leave the gated in area and go walking into the large field just outside our gates. I probably would not have been brave enough to wander out on my own, especially after being warned the night before that it's probably not the best idea to go walking around outside. However, our two chefs must have seen me outside and came out to show me around. When I mentioned the water buffalo I saw grazing in the field from the apartment window they pretty much insisted I go out there and get some water buffalo pictures. I was pretty eager to meet all the interesting animal creatures they have here (stay tuned for the post about my trip to the Monkey Temple) so I didn't need to be convinced too hard.

We went walking into the field and caught up with the water buffalo, who turned out to be much smaller than I anticipated, though I've seen some very large ones in other parts of the city since.
Spotting some stone houses off in the distance we kept going to check them out and came across a tiny village of local people. The guys I was with, along with most people at the office, are not local to this area so the language they tend to speak is Hindi. I'm sure they also speak some other language local to their origin since India has more than 30 official languages (according to Wikipedia), but the people in this area are primarily Telugu and many of them know neigher Hindi nor English. As a result, the bunch of us could not really communicate with the people we met aside from a few basic words and body language. However, despite the fact that my guides and I barely understood each other, and none of us really understood the locals, I managed to get around and meet a lot of people, see how they live, take lots of pictures, and everyone was extermely friendly and happy to see us.

I've realized since that other expats have not actually gone out there so I must have been as much of a sight for the people in the village as they were for me. The way we live here is sort of in a bubble of Western culture and amenities, discouraged to go out and really explore the local culture without close supervision, so I'm glad I had this opportunity to venture out on my own and get to see a part of local life that many of the people who stayed here for months probably haven't seen.

As I mentioned before, I was woken early on my first day by the construction going on outside my window. As a result, I stumbled out of my room around 10:00am, groggy but pretty excited to finally be here, and went looking for breakfast. Most of the expats stay in the same apartment complex and food is usually served in the same room in one of the larger apartments throughout the day by our designated team of chefs. It's actually just two guys but they are quite good and make a variety of cuisines - Italian, Thai, Chinese, and of course Indian. However, the breakfast is always the same, toast and an omelet, and you can get a fruit smoothy or some Indian tea, which I really enjoy. It's prepared with ginger and milk and some other stuff I'm not quite sure about. In any case, I had the first, though far from last, toast+omelet breakfast combinations of my stay, and headed to work. Although the office is pretty close, probably less than a mile, walking there is out of the question and we have drivers who take us there and back, as well as anywhere else we want to go, so I hopped in the car and went to work.

I got there close to lunch time, and was immediately greeted by a number of very friendly co-workers. Did I mention that people are exteremely friendly here? I also met the first expats, a married couple who both happened to actually speak Russian! One of them even learned it at the same U.S. Army base my father taught Russian back in 1991. Pretty amazing to travel across the globe to an exotic place like India and run into other Russian speakers. I was really tired but stayed at work until nearly 9:00pm fighting with a server install but finally took off and went back to the apartments. I hung out and met more expats and we watched some DVDs since local TV is pretty much limited to Bollywood type stuff with people dancing around and singing on every channel.

When I was ready to head to bed, one of the other guys suggested I crash in an empty room in one of the nicer apartments since I wasn't likely to get much sleep in the one I've been assigned. We called one of the girls who was staying in another room there and she didn't seem to mind so I collected some toiletries and a change of clothes and headed over to this other apartment. The whole experience felt very much like staying in a college dorm, stumbling around from one room to another, drinking lots of beer, meeting new people, sleeping in random places. It was a pretty fun experience I haven't had in a long time, the unstructured nature of the whole thing and the lack of normal social barriers.

At this stage it was pretty late and I've had a very long day with very little sleep so I was ready to finally get some rest. I was pleasantly suprised to find that the room in which I was crashing had curtains on the windows as well as a shower that was separated from the rest of the bathroom by a nice set of shower doors. I also borrowed some soap from the couple I mentioned earlier so I finally got to enjoy and a proper shower, with soap even! After that it was bed time and I slept like a baby until morning, with no construction or other unpleasantness interrupting my much-needed rest time.

On the drive to the apartment from the airport I got my first glimpse of the city, which was fairly limited since it was dark and not too many people were out in the street. However, I already started to notice the incredible state of poverty that's so evident when you go outside here. When we got to the gates of the apartment complex the driver honked the horn and one of the guys sitting around a fire just inside the gates ran up and opened it to let the car inside. That's right, there were a bunch of guys sitting around a fire inside the gates at 2:30am. I later realized they must be security but at the time I just thought they were homeless, which may or may not be true as well...I think homelessness has a different connotation here since many people seem to live in little tents and shacks which are probably not much better than a cardboard box but are still better off than others who don't even have a tent to sleep in. In any case, I will probably have lots more on this topic later when it is more appropriate. However, on the way to the apartment my first night here I didn't get too good a feel for the living conditions of the local residents.

When I got to the apartment, my guides who spoke very sparse amount of English, led me to my final destination and told me the accomodations I was going to have are the best in Hyderabad. This may or may not be true, but as a result I was expecting a fairly luxurious, Western style apartment. What I actually discovered was a little bit different. I was going to be staying in a single room in a "flat" that had a total of 3 private rooms with one neighbor sharing the room on the opposite side of the living area and one empty room.

My room was on the corner of the building and thus had two walls with windows, but no curtains on either of them. I had a private bathroom but it was not quite what one would expect in the West. The toilet was a normal Western style toilet, though with the standard hand-rinsing hose attachment which the locals here use in lieu of toilet paper and which all the toilets I've seen here tend to have. The big surprise was the shower, which consisted of a shower head on the wall in the corner about two feet to the left of the toilet (and about 6 feet off the floor naturally) and absolutely nothing else. No shower curtain, no partition along the floor to keep the water contained in the "shower area". In fact the water drain was clear on the other side of the bathroom under the sink. When I attempted to use the shower shortly after settling in I discovered that it was also spraying water from the side of the shower head directly into the middle of the bathroom so the entire floor, toilet and pretty much everything else in there was completely drenched in water when I was done. While something as simple as a shower curtain would prevent this, it is apparently not widely used here since Indians don't bathe using a shower head but rather use a bucket of water they scoop up and poor on themselves. I assume that baths are completely unheard of though I'll be very happy to discover I am wrong. I found that it can actually be a bit dangerous to have the water all over the bathroom floor since it's very easy to slip but luckily I've avoided doing that so far. In any case, there was also no soap so I had to endure a soapless shower after spending more than 20 hours total in transit which was fairly disappointing.

The room itself was completely bare, besides the bed, the dresser and the nightstand it was totally empty and lacking in any sort of comforts. It was fairly clean, but definitely rough around the edges, with the bathroom sink area being the biggest trouble area. If I had to compare it to something I'd guess it was similar to a $30/night motel somewhere in the middle of nowhere, U.S.A. Needless to say it was hard to swallow that these were the best accomodations in the city.

I finally got to bed around 3:00am and passed out for all of 3 hours. I would have probably slept for 12 but at 6:00am the construction directly across the walkway outside started up when a truck full of metal pipes pulled up under my window. Did I mention there were no curtains? The windows also turned out to have zero sound-proofing which I discovered when a number of people started taking turns climbing into the back of the truck and banging the metal pipes against each other. I gave up trying to figure out what they were doing and began looking for ear plugs. My upgrade to first class on the Delta flight payed off again since in addition to all the other perks they provided everyone in first class with a little traveler's care package which contained, among other neat and useful things, ear plugs! Once I dug them out and stuck them in my ears the noise from the construction, while still clearly audible, became no match for my need for rest and I had about 3 or 4 more hours of low quality but welcome sleep. At around 9:00 or 10:00 the contruction noise, which by this point was in full swing, finally won and I had to get up. Without any curtains on my large windows, and being on only the second floor, I felt like a fish in a bowl with all the construction guys just outside my place with a clear view of the entire room. None of them seemed too interested however and I was able to get dressed and head out to find breakfast without too much additional discomfort.

I'll leave out the rest of the events of the day for another post in order to finish up my accomodations story. After I complained about the noise when I got to work later that day I was told I could move into a different room in a building farther away from the construction, but I wouldn't be able to do it until Sunday when somebody else moves out. As a result I would have to spend two more nights in this room with no chance for decent sleep. I also found out that it is quite possible for the construction to go all night so this room was definitely not an option. I also forgot to mention that they didn't give me a key for the apartment since they apparently only had one, so both the front door as well as the door to my room was never locked. When I got home from work I also discovered that this apartment was used as the staff "cafeteria" and there were people sitting around the floor of the living room eating. Everyone here is exteremely friendly as I said before so I did not mind at all, and since I had nothing to compare it to I didn't realize that finding random people in their apartment was not the typical experience of the people who stay here. That night I actually ended up crashing in another flat, at which point I also found out that it was not normal to have no curtains, no soap, and no shower curtain. But I'll leave that story for another post as well.

I'm not sure why but it turns out they just decided to put me in the crappiest room possible despite the fact that there were other rooms available in much nicer apartments. For some reason the room they were moving me to became available early on Saturday afternoon so my 3rd night was spent in a significantly nicer room, with no contruction noise, a shower curtain in the bathroom, soap, blinds on the windows, a TV in the living room, wifi Internet access and basically all the comforts of home, give or take a few. The shower gives very little hot water so you end up taking prison style showers more often than I would like, the water pressure is not ideal, and the shower curtain I have does a pretty poor job of keeping the water contained. However, all in all the room I ended up in is fairly nice and comfortable. If it weren't for the shower issues I'd actually call it relatively luxurious and it's definitely a huge improvement over my initial accomodations so things seem to have worked out OK on that front.

I decided to make the flight as short as possible and use the same airline for every leg of the trip to ensure my luggage wouldn't get lost. Thinking that Lufthansa is a pretty good airline I figured they would be a good choice, especially considering that they had the shortest flights with only one stop over in Frankfurt. Unfortunately, it turned out that booking a Delta flight from NY to Frankfurt would cost nearly $1000 less and give me an extra hour in Frankfurt thus making total travel time slightly longer. In reality this turned out to be a good thing since Delta decided to upgrade me to first class but I'll get back to that soon.

Heeding the warning on my ticket to get to the airport 3 hours before my flight which was at 8:20pm I left my apartment at around 4:30 and was standing in line to check in my bag an hour later. The whole procedure took much less than I anticipated so by 6:00 I was inside and passed security. Thinking I was in for a crappy coach flight and bad airline food I went to the airport Chile's to get some dinner since I had so much time to kill before the flight. I wasn't terribly hungry yet but I decided a bacon cheeseburger and a pint of Guinness would probably be a good idea since I wasn't going to get any pork or beef products for the next month. However, when it came time to board the attendant at the door changed my seat assignment from 22G to 3G. It didn't immediately occur to me that 3G was all the way in the front of the plane and must be in a much better class until I saw the seats. There was about 5 feet of space between them and they were separated from their neighbors by an armrest at least a foot and a half wide. These were very comfortable seats, at least by airplane standards! The food in first class was excellent, they served a choice of fish or lamb for main course, soup or salad for appetizer, and fruit or ice cream for dessert. Despite the fact that I just had a giant burger and a plate of fries, not to mention the pint, I still ate everything they served and it was all quite good. There was of course free beer and wine, which I naturally sampled as well.

My neighbor in first class ended up being another guy who got bumped up from coach. He told me he was originally from Oregon but heading back to Latvia where he's been teaching English in a small village for the last couple of years. During the times I wasn't passed out cold in the luxury seat, which went really far back and even had a foot rest that came up to make it even more bed-like, we talked quite a bit and had a pretty interesting conversation about language study, the reasons he came out to Latvia, and I told him about living in New York which he found pretty strange being from a small town. All in all he was a pretty good single-serving friend, to use Fight Club terminology.

The flight was so comfortable and with an interesting person to talk to I barely noticed that it was over and we landed in Frankfurt. The layover was pretty unremarkable overall but I did manage to observe a couple of interesting things. Most signs at the airport were in both German and English so it was easy to get around and the airport staff seemed to all know English as well so it wasn't as intimidating as I thought it would be at first. It was also very strange to see people smoking indoors, especially at an airport.

After some stumbling around I located the Lufthansa boarding area and went to my gate. To my surprise the waiting area was closed off and people had to sit on the floor in the large hall outside. My wait was only about an hour before they started boarding so it wasn't bad but it was my first tipoff that the next leg of the trip wasn't going to be near as comfortable as the first one had been. Unfortunately, my suspicion was confirmed once I got to my seat. Even the first class seats I passed on the way to mine were not nearly as nice as the one in which I just spent the previous 8 hours. And the coach seats were a complete horror. They were narrow and the arm rest would not go all the way back causing it to dig uncomfortably into your shoulder if you decided to put it up. To add insult to injury the food tray would not drop all the way down unless you put up the armrest since the seat in front of you was so close that the tray would actually land on top of the armrest. I lucked out and the flight was not full so the seat next to me ended up being empty giving me some room to manuever. Had there been someone sitting next to me on this flight it would have easily turned into the worst flight I had ever taken. The seat ahead of me was so close that when I tried to put on my shoes I couldn't actually lean forward enough for my hands to reach my feet. Fortunately, there was nobody next to me as I mentioned so it was passably tolerable. The food was a big letdown as well, standard TV-dinner type arrangements of the most tasteless ingredients imaginable. The saving grace was that despite being in coach they served free beer, pretty decent German brand whose name I managed to forget, which I partook in liberally to dull the pain of the whole experience. After a very long 8.5 hours the flight was finally over and I landed in India, the first time I've been on foreign soil since I initially came to the U.S. in 1991.

I was a bit worried that I might have some issues getting through customs since I didn't know the address of the place where I would be staying and it seemed to be a required part of the form they made me fill out. Luckily, it turned out to not be an issue and after about an hour waiting in customs, goiong through more luggage screenings and waiting for my bag (which was the absolute last to come out) I headed for the door. I was again a little worried that I may not have anyone to meet me and take me to the corporate apartments but that fear was unfounded as well, there were actually 3 guys there to meet me and drive me to my new home for the next month. At this point it was after 2:00am Hyderabad time and I had been traveling for roughly 18 hours.