Day 20
We woke late for the first time in weeks. It felt strange.
It was hard to wake up and see the same dingy hotel walls we'd seen for days. The team was sick of Hyderabad. I'd taken to calling it Hyderaworse.
We wanted nothing more then a good weekend brunch and then put some distance between us and this town.
Michael had purchased a simple water heater and we'd been using it to make coffee. With some foresight I brought some ground coffee Cheryl and I received for X-Mas from a cousin. It proved a lifesaver although we jokingly referred to our brew as "bathroom coffee" as it was stationed next to the sink. It held much appeal regardless.
I asked our front desk where we might find a good non-veg place for breakfast.
The thinly veiled look of disgust was better suited in response to the statement, "I'd like to eat your dog." I was given it all the same with the useless answer, "go north to Secretariat street. Maybe something there."
I knew Secretariat Street and it ran along a lake and an empty park. We'd never find some sausage up there which I think was exactly her intent.
We walked back over to the area around The Palace Restaurant, and uncomfortably for me, the Taj Mahal Restaurant where I'd had coffee with my punjabi teacher friend.
Past grievances aside, we had a nice, albeit, vegetarian breakfast. We all sampled the samosas and I had a delicious onion masala dosa. Adam went for the masala poori, which was ballooned to the size of a human head. Michael, to his chagrin, ordered just the buttered white toast, regretting it once he saw our fare.
Back at the hotel, we repacked everything and editted out what was expendable to make space for souvenirs. In our preparation for this trip, we'd all tried to both pack light and be prepared for any contingency. We had sleeping bags, tents, mosquito netting, wet wipes, bags of medication, water purifying tablets, etc. I even had a DIY camping stove with a wind screen, all made from recycled soda cans.
Most of this stuff we didn't even use. The sleeping bags came in handy in the hotels with dodgy bedding.
We purged what we could, repacked and settled in for the wait for our ride to the airport. It was 5 hours away and we were ready. It made it seem like 10 hours.
Finally our car arrived.
We ended up abandoning some stuff in the room for the ever present hotel workers to find and giving some stuff away to the parking lot security attendants. They seemed puzzled.
We hoped 2 hours was plenty of time to get to the airport and deal with ticketing and check-in for our domestic flight.
It actually proved to be way more time then needed. Domestic flights in India don't allow more then 1 small carry-on bag. We had loads of camera equipment that needed personal attention, so had to check all our own bags. We should have expected this since we'd gone through the same before. For some reason we didn't. All comfort inducing gadgets and products were checked in with our other luggage.
Gear in hand we made it through security and to our gate. "Our" gate, as it turned out, was everyone's gate. The Hyderabad Airport has only 1 gate.
Domestic airport terminals in India have all been triumphant culminations in this nation's experience at ineffiency, incompetence, over-staffing, poor training and mismanagement.
There is a uniformed employee for every 6 travelers, each one not really doing anything and all incapable of answering a question or performing their assigned task without 3-4 other bobbling worker's.
The necessary patience was quite nearly impossible to muster. Yes, I'm bitter.
Every domestic traveler goes through one large room with the one functioning gate. Outside the gate are shuttle buses. All flights are boarded on the tarmac.
We were remarkably early as our flight was delayed 40 minutes. Everything is late in India.
As a result, we got to watch the room fill to over capacity and empty again, a half dozen times.
Adding some sparkle to the airport experience's luster, were 2 different, yet both discomfort-inducing factors.
1) The heat of the day drives mosquitoes in open doors and windows and conveniently enough for them, closer to people. The airport with it's abundent water, constantly open doors and large population density, made it a veritable mosquito sanctuary.
I've seen fewer, less hungry bugs while trekking through rainforest in the Amazon watershed.
2) The airport paging system, while not really intelligible due to well-worn, blown speakers, makes up for it by being very, very loud.
The staff manning it need to make their pages in multiple languages which requires time. Unfortunately there is little time between shuttles, none really to make the many pages each flight requires - "flight such and such now in security", "...now boarding,"...still boarding,"...now leaving," "Mr. Rasheed why aren't you on the plane?", and "the plane is now gone." Having to announce every stage of the flight's departure means there is one constant page, for hours on end. Each paragraph is separated by an electronic "bong" sound.
Since no one can make out what is being paged, the airport thoughtfully employs droves of workers, shoving through the crowds of waiting passengers and bored employees, shouting everything the page is simultaneously saying. The constant din means you almost certainly have to tune it all out just to keep a grip on your sanity. Every so often you need to go in search of someone who speaks English to tell you the status of your flight. No doubt this confirms their belief in the need for the constant paging and shouting, causing bosses to urge the staff to really put their lungs into it.
The domestic airline Jet & Air India are true anomalies to most other Indian businesses I'd seen. The inflight experience is a relief after the trials of boarding. The staff is always happy, attentive, with top-notch food on real dishware. I wish they'd expand to Chicago.
Finally in Delhi we secured a large car to take us to our hotel - The Maidens (http://www.maidenshotel.com/).
Driving in a car in India is a completely novel thing. It doesn't seem like the same place. Steel doors & glass mean for a quiet(er) ride without the fear of accidentally getting gored by a passing cow or having a stray dog jump on your lap. It also makes you a large, unmissable target for the beggars.
The India in our many travel guide books seem finally understandable. To date we'd thought they had just gotten the whole place terribly wrong. We just entered the India for tourists.
We'd traveled 2000 kilometers of India in the seldom-seen-by-tourists, brown-collared world of the working poor. Rolling up anywhere, commanding your own 'auto' fundamentally changed the dynamic between ourselves and the people we'd meet along the way. While never equalizing us, what we didn't know was, it humanized us in the eyes of the southern Indians. We weren't just strange, rich, foreigners. We were doing the unthinkable, living on their terms, going to places far, far off the tourist map.
The car ride and the people at the airport were different from our Indian world. We'd gone 3 weeks with hardly seeing shoes, only the hardened, wide-toed bare feet of the workers or sandals. Finally I'd found out who bought the socks I'd see for sale on the street corners. We never saw socks actually worn and wondered how the sock vendors made a living. Turns out the well-socked were whipping by us all the time, protected out of sight, in their cars. It occurred to us that we'd never interacted with anyone from a good quarter of population the size of Canada & Mexico combined - the middle class and wealthy.
There is a part of India that seemingly went from walled compound to car, to mall or night club, never really living the street life. That wasn't OUR India.
These were the friends and relatives of the Indians abroad that warned us to avoid the streets, never drive and never let anyone see your camera. Had we'd heeded their warnings, well, we'd have just stayed home. Our whole trip was about doing what many said we shouldn't.
Arriving at our palatial hotel, a treat for our last night's on the continent, we started to see the India of the typical tourist. An exotic desitination, not too foreign, where everyone speaks English, service is very western and there's burgers and fries on every menu. A tropical locale, not too far off the cultural map, like maybe the Bahamas.
The India of our last couple of days was a bit like a theme park rendition of the India we'd come to know.
Our fancy hotel was so fancy, that rickshaws weren't even allowed to pull up front. While thoroughly enjoying the western comforts, I was just a bit defensive about our India. The real India of the smoky, chaotic streets outside our walled compound.
While it's easy to get caught up in the vivid descriptions of the sights, sounds, smells, and lack of any personal space of our 3 weeks driving, the different way we were treated in our rickshaws is something that almost no outsider will get to experience. It defied description or comparison although we've grappled with it amoungst ourselves.
The India we experienced was one of the most genuinely friendly places I think we'll ever be. The craziness of the day to day is the price of entry.
anthony //
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Indian Universal Truths #3
When making sweeping generalizations about Southern India, in a humorous manner, a writer could go on and on as long as you still have ideas. This will be my last Universal Truths posting even though I could make it a full time job. Enjoy.
#11 There Are 2 Only Types of Indians
India's divided into 2 distinct camps. Yes, there are regional variations in language, culture, religion and race. Sure many partition India along these obvious lines.
To someone born far away and raised in a capitalist culture, controlled by large global corporations, the true divisions in India are different. A foreign sensibility, unable to distinguish between Urdu and Tamil, sees them all pretty much the same. The differences appear in other ways.
I've been told that water quality in this country took a dramatic turn for the worse about a decade ago and now even the locals avoid it. Everyone drinks bottled water or finds themselves vomitting out a bus window adn their children born with six toes.
Enter the corporate sharks.
Indias are either in the Pepsi/Aquafina or Coca-Cola/Kinley camps.
I've been told quite fervently by some well meaning local that either Kinley or Aquafina is the best water in India and urged to drink nothing else.
This sad reality and the all too obvious problem of all the empty plastic bottles, gives one a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. The feeling of global doom seems closer here then anywhere.
#12 Back Fat is Sexy
The properly worn sari with tight half shirt and wrap, reveals large portions of the sides of the female back. Sported by all your typical portly housewives and you have visible rolls of back fat everywhere you look.
It's been the case for thousands of years, I supposed, so it shouldn't have stunned me to see a billboard for a national women's clothing store chain showing of this body part. The photo was of the back of a seated model on a colorful sweep. It was a top-notched, pro job with high production values. The model was leaning to the side and the inside curves of her back had a healthy roll.
Certainly in the US we have more then our share of visible fat in public and maybe as a result great guilt about our excesses and our less then perfect bodies.
I know first hand that a billboard like this would never fly in the States. I've photoshopped my share of fat rolls from models during my stint in advertising. The billboard in question had been lovingly retouched, skin smoothed, color corrected - the usual. The roll in this shot was proudly presented.
My conclusion: back fat is sexy in India.
Or maybe they just have a different opinion about what a little fat means. Maybe it implies success since the working schmoes here are crazily thin. Maybe they just don't have the unrealistic body issues that we Westerners do and showed the model just how she was. Real.
#13 Foreigners Don't Hail Cabs
Instead you shoo them away like gnats until you need one.
Walking down the street in Hyderabad, we had a constant stream of autorickshaws pull up and say, "Hello. Hello. Taxi? Taxi? Where you go? Come. Come!"
We'd always say "no" since if we needed to get somewhere by auto we had our own.
A few plucky driver's, when told "no, we don't need a taxi," would say, "Why?"
It brought to light thier belief that a fat, rich foreigner would certainly rather take a cab 2 blocks then walk, and for that matter, ought to.
Sometimes we'd snap and before they could say anything we'd blurt out, "Yes, can I help you? Are you lost?" They'd be shocked and not know what to say. I'd follow it up by offering to give them a break and drive them around as I was an experienced auto driver. They'd laugh.
#11 There Are 2 Only Types of Indians
India's divided into 2 distinct camps. Yes, there are regional variations in language, culture, religion and race. Sure many partition India along these obvious lines.
To someone born far away and raised in a capitalist culture, controlled by large global corporations, the true divisions in India are different. A foreign sensibility, unable to distinguish between Urdu and Tamil, sees them all pretty much the same. The differences appear in other ways.
I've been told that water quality in this country took a dramatic turn for the worse about a decade ago and now even the locals avoid it. Everyone drinks bottled water or finds themselves vomitting out a bus window adn their children born with six toes.
Enter the corporate sharks.
Indias are either in the Pepsi/Aquafina or Coca-Cola/Kinley camps.
I've been told quite fervently by some well meaning local that either Kinley or Aquafina is the best water in India and urged to drink nothing else.
This sad reality and the all too obvious problem of all the empty plastic bottles, gives one a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. The feeling of global doom seems closer here then anywhere.
#12 Back Fat is Sexy
The properly worn sari with tight half shirt and wrap, reveals large portions of the sides of the female back. Sported by all your typical portly housewives and you have visible rolls of back fat everywhere you look.
It's been the case for thousands of years, I supposed, so it shouldn't have stunned me to see a billboard for a national women's clothing store chain showing of this body part. The photo was of the back of a seated model on a colorful sweep. It was a top-notched, pro job with high production values. The model was leaning to the side and the inside curves of her back had a healthy roll.
Certainly in the US we have more then our share of visible fat in public and maybe as a result great guilt about our excesses and our less then perfect bodies.
I know first hand that a billboard like this would never fly in the States. I've photoshopped my share of fat rolls from models during my stint in advertising. The billboard in question had been lovingly retouched, skin smoothed, color corrected - the usual. The roll in this shot was proudly presented.
My conclusion: back fat is sexy in India.
Or maybe they just have a different opinion about what a little fat means. Maybe it implies success since the working schmoes here are crazily thin. Maybe they just don't have the unrealistic body issues that we Westerners do and showed the model just how she was. Real.
#13 Foreigners Don't Hail Cabs
Instead you shoo them away like gnats until you need one.
Walking down the street in Hyderabad, we had a constant stream of autorickshaws pull up and say, "Hello. Hello. Taxi? Taxi? Where you go? Come. Come!"
We'd always say "no" since if we needed to get somewhere by auto we had our own.
A few plucky driver's, when told "no, we don't need a taxi," would say, "Why?"
It brought to light thier belief that a fat, rich foreigner would certainly rather take a cab 2 blocks then walk, and for that matter, ought to.
Sometimes we'd snap and before they could say anything we'd blurt out, "Yes, can I help you? Are you lost?" They'd be shocked and not know what to say. I'd follow it up by offering to give them a break and drive them around as I was an experienced auto driver. They'd laugh.
Day 19: The Rally Comes To An End
Day 19
As has become second nature, we woke before dawn and headed out of town. It was the last day with the autorickshaws and our last day of shooting. We were determined to do it right.
Back towards Vijayawada seemed like the shortest route to the countryside. The goal was to get a shot that illustrated a roadside intestinal emergency. Specifically Michael running from the rickshaw with TP in hand.
We found the perfect spot out in the desert. It just so happened to be across from the tent city for the School of Surveyors.
The set up was on a small rise of pink granite, just off the highway. The region is solid granite and marble, yet the buildings are all constructed of cheap brick, cement or palm leaves.
The photo turned out to be quite funny with only a few spectators around, all at a safe distance away. The ironic part of the shot was that we barely had any stomach problems at all. At least up until then.
Back in Hyderabad we decided to walk around town some. Our driving was done and the last photo taken. It was time to be tourists.
We struggled a bit under the blazing sun to find the side street entrance to the India Industrial Expo 2007 that I'd stumbled upon the previous night.
Finally it appeared and we paid our 10Rs. to get in.
Where the expo had been hundred and hundreds of tents with thousands of shoppers, now most tents were closed and no people milled about. There were no street vendors hawking blinky necklaces, fresh sugar cane water, mini poories, or watermelon. The expo was basically closed except for the a handful of shops and the ticket office.
They were willing to sell you a ticket if you were dumb enough to buy one.
We were, unknowingly.
Michael and Adam wanted some souvenirs and we got lucky and found a place with some cool stuff from the Indian state of Orissa. They are known for their delicate illustrations. The boys bought some amazing folding wall hanging made from palm leaves. They were intricately illustrated and hand cut. Medallions in each panel flipped open changing from a diety to a form of the kama sutra. Funny stuff.
Back at the hotel we called the Rickshaw Run organizers in the UK, to find out the progress on arranging a hand off. We were told they had a local lined up who would come to our hotel and lead us to a Bajaj dealer.
We cleaned up our chariots and prepared to say goodbye.
What once terrified us had now become a close friend. We never went as far as naming the vehicles, just calling them 'yours' or 'mine' for Adam or my auto.
Regardless we'd come to respect the mighty autos. They'd herded us over 2000 kilometers of Souther India, providing a thin protective layer of metal and vinyl between us and certain, messy death. We were going to miss driving them despite the rigors required. They would be quite fun to have back home.
Someone needed them more then us and we were glad they could provide a way of life for family.
Our contact guy arrived and led us on his moped to a nearby Bajaj place. It was a brief, bittersweet drive down a small alleyway.
Like all things in India, handling off 2 petrol-fueled auto rickshaes from 2 states over, was going to require lots of people staring, much paperwork (hand-written in triplicate,) time and patience. Not to mention frequent explanations of what 3 white dudes were doing driving Kerala-based autos, all of which needed to be translated into Urdu, Telugu and Hindi.
During this long and trying process I became aware of trouble in my abdomen. Instantly I felt the need to get back to the hotel - fast. Being only a couple blocks away I thought I could make it.
I did, but just barely.
After 3 weeks in Indai, nothing gave me "Delhi Belly" including the questionable street food, until I had the lunch in my fancy hotel. It would be the 'nice' place with the contrived cleanliness, utensils and napkins that would do me in.
Luckily, maybe because of the Cipro., I immediately started taking, my affliction was very temporary.
I was ready for culinary action by dinner that evening.
We relaxed that afternoon and let the idea of the end of the rickshaw traveling sink in.
Later that night, well rested and ready to try on our new roles, we set out for a fancy dinner.
We walked, much to the chagrin of the local taxi drivers, to the acclaimed restaurant, The Palace.
It sits atop Hyderabads tallest building, a squat, 8-storied concrete business structure, full of IT and software companies.
It's hard to believe that in one of India's largest urban sprawls, with millions of residents, no structure comes close to 8 stories tall.
Our windowside table afforded a panoramic view of the smoking Hyderabadi nightscape.
We were in a celebratory mood and relishing a rare non-vegetarian restaurant, we all ordered meat of some kind. I thoroughly enjoyed my Rajistani spicy ginger mutton. Michael had fish and Adam the murgh kabobs, also known as chicken.
As has become second nature, we woke before dawn and headed out of town. It was the last day with the autorickshaws and our last day of shooting. We were determined to do it right.
Back towards Vijayawada seemed like the shortest route to the countryside. The goal was to get a shot that illustrated a roadside intestinal emergency. Specifically Michael running from the rickshaw with TP in hand.
We found the perfect spot out in the desert. It just so happened to be across from the tent city for the School of Surveyors.
The set up was on a small rise of pink granite, just off the highway. The region is solid granite and marble, yet the buildings are all constructed of cheap brick, cement or palm leaves.
The photo turned out to be quite funny with only a few spectators around, all at a safe distance away. The ironic part of the shot was that we barely had any stomach problems at all. At least up until then.
Back in Hyderabad we decided to walk around town some. Our driving was done and the last photo taken. It was time to be tourists.
We struggled a bit under the blazing sun to find the side street entrance to the India Industrial Expo 2007 that I'd stumbled upon the previous night.
Finally it appeared and we paid our 10Rs. to get in.
Where the expo had been hundred and hundreds of tents with thousands of shoppers, now most tents were closed and no people milled about. There were no street vendors hawking blinky necklaces, fresh sugar cane water, mini poories, or watermelon. The expo was basically closed except for the a handful of shops and the ticket office.
They were willing to sell you a ticket if you were dumb enough to buy one.
We were, unknowingly.
Michael and Adam wanted some souvenirs and we got lucky and found a place with some cool stuff from the Indian state of Orissa. They are known for their delicate illustrations. The boys bought some amazing folding wall hanging made from palm leaves. They were intricately illustrated and hand cut. Medallions in each panel flipped open changing from a diety to a form of the kama sutra. Funny stuff.
Back at the hotel we called the Rickshaw Run organizers in the UK, to find out the progress on arranging a hand off. We were told they had a local lined up who would come to our hotel and lead us to a Bajaj dealer.
We cleaned up our chariots and prepared to say goodbye.
What once terrified us had now become a close friend. We never went as far as naming the vehicles, just calling them 'yours' or 'mine' for Adam or my auto.
Regardless we'd come to respect the mighty autos. They'd herded us over 2000 kilometers of Souther India, providing a thin protective layer of metal and vinyl between us and certain, messy death. We were going to miss driving them despite the rigors required. They would be quite fun to have back home.
Someone needed them more then us and we were glad they could provide a way of life for family.
Our contact guy arrived and led us on his moped to a nearby Bajaj place. It was a brief, bittersweet drive down a small alleyway.
Like all things in India, handling off 2 petrol-fueled auto rickshaes from 2 states over, was going to require lots of people staring, much paperwork (hand-written in triplicate,) time and patience. Not to mention frequent explanations of what 3 white dudes were doing driving Kerala-based autos, all of which needed to be translated into Urdu, Telugu and Hindi.
During this long and trying process I became aware of trouble in my abdomen. Instantly I felt the need to get back to the hotel - fast. Being only a couple blocks away I thought I could make it.
I did, but just barely.
After 3 weeks in Indai, nothing gave me "Delhi Belly" including the questionable street food, until I had the lunch in my fancy hotel. It would be the 'nice' place with the contrived cleanliness, utensils and napkins that would do me in.
Luckily, maybe because of the Cipro., I immediately started taking, my affliction was very temporary.
I was ready for culinary action by dinner that evening.
We relaxed that afternoon and let the idea of the end of the rickshaw traveling sink in.
Later that night, well rested and ready to try on our new roles, we set out for a fancy dinner.
We walked, much to the chagrin of the local taxi drivers, to the acclaimed restaurant, The Palace.
It sits atop Hyderabads tallest building, a squat, 8-storied concrete business structure, full of IT and software companies.
It's hard to believe that in one of India's largest urban sprawls, with millions of residents, no structure comes close to 8 stories tall.
Our windowside table afforded a panoramic view of the smoking Hyderabadi nightscape.
We were in a celebratory mood and relishing a rare non-vegetarian restaurant, we all ordered meat of some kind. I thoroughly enjoyed my Rajistani spicy ginger mutton. Michael had fish and Adam the murgh kabobs, also known as chicken.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Day 18: Buddha, Eating with Hands, and Coffee
Day 18
We woke before dawn as has become our routine and headed out before the traffic made the transition from dangerous to lethal.
There is a large statue of Buddha in the middle of a large lake on the north side of town. The lake, Hussain Sagar, is actually manmade and divides Hyderabad from Secunderbad. The statue was built and floated out to a small island by ferry. The boat and statue sank and it was nearly decade before they brought it back up, in the late 90's. It seemed like a great thing to capture in the golden, smog-induced, first light of the day.
The statue, while huge, is in the middle of a large lake and wasn't going to be big enough for our purposes. As typical in all our photo scenarios, the real photo only becomes apparant once we get somewhere and find out we can't do what we'd planned on. This was no different.
We set up the gear and go a fun shot of Michael doing his morning excercise in a park setting. It should be good.
From there we headed out west to a small town called Pataneherv. There was a roadside food shack that Michael thought would be a good scene to get a "eating with hands" shot.
Our restauranteurs may not have understood completely what we were doing, but went along with it anyway. Michael set up one of the plastic, dirty tables outside of the restaurant and we got to getting the gear up.
This drew a crowd, as usual, but they were an amicable bunch and we had more then enough extras for the scene.
The shot was excellent and Michael claims the food was too. The place looked even sketchy to me, so we took his word on it.
Adam tipped the owners of the Hotel New Manjira 100 Rs. and they laughed. Seems like it wasn't enough. They weren't really taking into consideration that the meal was 7 Rs. and their vacant restaurant now had 60 gawkers in it. We'd done them no small service.
On the way back through town we gassed up and got bad gas. Our rickshaw was acting funny and we kept stalling. Poking around everywhere narrowed the problem down to the gas we'd just purchased. We pushed the auto into another station and somehow managed to convinced them to take out the full-tank's worth of petrol we had. They looked really skeptical but got to sucking on a long tube pushed into our tank. The attendant got a mouth full of the bad gas and oil mixture we'd just put in, but we got the gas out. While he was off spitting in the street, we filled a 5 liter plastic jug.
There was still more left, so I had to start another bottle and got a case of gas mouth too.
Unpleasant.
The station folks were incredulous when we asked them to fill the auto back up again with different petrol. They thought we were either insane or supersitious and thought our fuel was possessed by evil spirits. In truth it was a little of both.
We had some breakfast when we got back to the hotel. Our hotel restaurant is really uninspired when it comes to breakfast. It's vegetarian so no eggs. Just vidli, some grits like stuff and white bread. They were even reluctant to toast the bread. Forget about coffee. We thought we'd walk over to the fancy, Quality Inn nextdoor and have breakfast there. It was the same as ours.
We relaxed in the afternoon and I went out for a long session at an internet cafe. The blog needed to be updated and I wanted to check my email. It took 3 hours. Dial-up is your only option in India. Atleast this cafe was only charging 15 rupees an hour and not the 200 like the hotel.
At the end of my long session I met a Punjabi teacher who wanted Team Good Korma to come to his school and talk to the kids. He showed me some photos of some people from Greece in a classroom full of students and said they were some tourists he's met last week. He stressed how great it was for the kids. I thought it was a cool idea but didn't want to promise anything. We had full agenda planned the next day with getting some last minute photography done and then turning over the auto rickshaws.
Unswayed my Punjab friend asked me to get some coffee nearby and tell him about the charity. I told him that I had to meet my friends for dinner in 15 minutes and needed to go. He was graciously forceful and told me coffee would take 5.
The potential for actual coffee won me over and I said yes. Instead of being "nearby" and walkable, it was nearby and scooterable. I didn't want to be rude but I was not really happy about riding double on a strange man's scooter. Sure you see it all day and night here, but...
He started it up and said get on. I did and got a firm grip on the handle in the back. We sped off and he shouted for me not to be shy and get in close.
I didn't.
This wasn't going well and I didn't like the conclusions I was coming to about the situation.
We arrived at the plush, Taj Mahal restaurant and hotel not far away. I reiterated that I could only have a quick coffee and then would have to go.
I immediately started the conversation around his school and found out he "taught" all over town. When asked what he wanted people to talk about to the kids, he said we could talk about whatever we wanted. He was seeming more and more dodgy.
He switched the conversation over and said he was an amatuer filmmaker and he'd love to show me some of his work. I said it was too bad we were leaving in the morning.
He offered to take me on a late night tour, after my dinner with my friends, of a local bazaar. He had some friends in the Kasmiri Fabrics business there that would just love to meet me.
I told him that I'd been to that bazaar, oddly enough, to look at fabric for MY WIFE.
He looked like kid outside a closed candy store. Looking away for the first time he casually asked if I had children. I told him that I had one on the way and he mumbled a blessing.
I asked if he had children himself and he said maybe in a couple years. He was presently single and didn't have much time these days because he was busy. Taking up his time was working on social issues like, (eye contact made) lesbian and gay issues in India and also poverty and stuff.
Confirmation.
The coffee ended quickly.
He insisted that I call him about coming to the school the next day. Even if I couldn't come, he'd like a call so he could arrange sending me some of his movies.
The boys got a nice laugh out of my story.
We decided we'd earned some beer and went out for some drinks.
We woke before dawn as has become our routine and headed out before the traffic made the transition from dangerous to lethal.
There is a large statue of Buddha in the middle of a large lake on the north side of town. The lake, Hussain Sagar, is actually manmade and divides Hyderabad from Secunderbad. The statue was built and floated out to a small island by ferry. The boat and statue sank and it was nearly decade before they brought it back up, in the late 90's. It seemed like a great thing to capture in the golden, smog-induced, first light of the day.
The statue, while huge, is in the middle of a large lake and wasn't going to be big enough for our purposes. As typical in all our photo scenarios, the real photo only becomes apparant once we get somewhere and find out we can't do what we'd planned on. This was no different.
We set up the gear and go a fun shot of Michael doing his morning excercise in a park setting. It should be good.
From there we headed out west to a small town called Pataneherv. There was a roadside food shack that Michael thought would be a good scene to get a "eating with hands" shot.
Our restauranteurs may not have understood completely what we were doing, but went along with it anyway. Michael set up one of the plastic, dirty tables outside of the restaurant and we got to getting the gear up.
This drew a crowd, as usual, but they were an amicable bunch and we had more then enough extras for the scene.
The shot was excellent and Michael claims the food was too. The place looked even sketchy to me, so we took his word on it.
Adam tipped the owners of the Hotel New Manjira 100 Rs. and they laughed. Seems like it wasn't enough. They weren't really taking into consideration that the meal was 7 Rs. and their vacant restaurant now had 60 gawkers in it. We'd done them no small service.
On the way back through town we gassed up and got bad gas. Our rickshaw was acting funny and we kept stalling. Poking around everywhere narrowed the problem down to the gas we'd just purchased. We pushed the auto into another station and somehow managed to convinced them to take out the full-tank's worth of petrol we had. They looked really skeptical but got to sucking on a long tube pushed into our tank. The attendant got a mouth full of the bad gas and oil mixture we'd just put in, but we got the gas out. While he was off spitting in the street, we filled a 5 liter plastic jug.
There was still more left, so I had to start another bottle and got a case of gas mouth too.
Unpleasant.
The station folks were incredulous when we asked them to fill the auto back up again with different petrol. They thought we were either insane or supersitious and thought our fuel was possessed by evil spirits. In truth it was a little of both.
We had some breakfast when we got back to the hotel. Our hotel restaurant is really uninspired when it comes to breakfast. It's vegetarian so no eggs. Just vidli, some grits like stuff and white bread. They were even reluctant to toast the bread. Forget about coffee. We thought we'd walk over to the fancy, Quality Inn nextdoor and have breakfast there. It was the same as ours.
We relaxed in the afternoon and I went out for a long session at an internet cafe. The blog needed to be updated and I wanted to check my email. It took 3 hours. Dial-up is your only option in India. Atleast this cafe was only charging 15 rupees an hour and not the 200 like the hotel.
At the end of my long session I met a Punjabi teacher who wanted Team Good Korma to come to his school and talk to the kids. He showed me some photos of some people from Greece in a classroom full of students and said they were some tourists he's met last week. He stressed how great it was for the kids. I thought it was a cool idea but didn't want to promise anything. We had full agenda planned the next day with getting some last minute photography done and then turning over the auto rickshaws.
Unswayed my Punjab friend asked me to get some coffee nearby and tell him about the charity. I told him that I had to meet my friends for dinner in 15 minutes and needed to go. He was graciously forceful and told me coffee would take 5.
The potential for actual coffee won me over and I said yes. Instead of being "nearby" and walkable, it was nearby and scooterable. I didn't want to be rude but I was not really happy about riding double on a strange man's scooter. Sure you see it all day and night here, but...
He started it up and said get on. I did and got a firm grip on the handle in the back. We sped off and he shouted for me not to be shy and get in close.
I didn't.
This wasn't going well and I didn't like the conclusions I was coming to about the situation.
We arrived at the plush, Taj Mahal restaurant and hotel not far away. I reiterated that I could only have a quick coffee and then would have to go.
I immediately started the conversation around his school and found out he "taught" all over town. When asked what he wanted people to talk about to the kids, he said we could talk about whatever we wanted. He was seeming more and more dodgy.
He switched the conversation over and said he was an amatuer filmmaker and he'd love to show me some of his work. I said it was too bad we were leaving in the morning.
He offered to take me on a late night tour, after my dinner with my friends, of a local bazaar. He had some friends in the Kasmiri Fabrics business there that would just love to meet me.
I told him that I'd been to that bazaar, oddly enough, to look at fabric for MY WIFE.
He looked like kid outside a closed candy store. Looking away for the first time he casually asked if I had children. I told him that I had one on the way and he mumbled a blessing.
I asked if he had children himself and he said maybe in a couple years. He was presently single and didn't have much time these days because he was busy. Taking up his time was working on social issues like, (eye contact made) lesbian and gay issues in India and also poverty and stuff.
Confirmation.
The coffee ended quickly.
He insisted that I call him about coming to the school the next day. Even if I couldn't come, he'd like a call so he could arrange sending me some of his movies.
The boys got a nice laugh out of my story.
We decided we'd earned some beer and went out for some drinks.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Day 17: Hyderabad by Day
Day 17
I'm starting to think I was a little hard on Chennai at first. Large cities in India are terrible places to live and try to move about. Hyderabad is a fine example of this phenomenon.
We got up before dawn and headed far out of town, the way we'd come in. We found a remote area with palm trees, scrub brush and big rocky hills near a the town of Malkapur. It was the perfect spot to get some off road shots.
We took the top off one of the Rickshaws and mounted the medium format camera to the framework. We got some stupendous shots of Michael driving a rickshaw as the lead rickshaw towed it through the desert. After he clones out the tow line, the shots will look amazing.
A local came to gawk (even in the middle of nowhere) and we had him trip the shutter for a reenactment shot of our team logo. It was hysterical.
After a long rest that afternoon, Adam and I went to the Charminer district of old Hyderabad. It has one of the oldest mosques in this area, from the 15th century, Mecca Masjib.
This is an obviously heavy Islamic town and it was the first time I'd seen so many burqas. It was like something out of a movie or CNN.
The dense bazaar part of town is known for it's perfume and essential oils. We found a little shop just like we'd read about in a guide book. They had the local specialty we'd read about, "Gil". It was also known as "Miti" in Hindi and is supposed to smell like the wet earth from the first rain after a long, hot summer. It does smell dirt-like, but we're not experts on the seasons here yet.
During the past 2 evenings, motivated by the team's utter lack of intestinal problems the whole trip, I decided to throw caution to the wind and eat street food. Late the previous evening I had a couple samosas, some curried popcorn (mine's better,) and a palak paneer baked pastry. They were all amazing and I was kicking myself I hadn't been braver during our 3 weeks here.
This evening I told Adam about it as we walked about and he got into the spirit. This surprised me as Adam has lived up to his nickname, "control group", as he likes to be the control group in any ingesting experiment that Michael and I undertake. If we order the house special, Adam will invariably say, "I'm going to control group that."
When he ordered some peanuts from a street cart, I was quietly shocked. The cart looked really cool. It was a high, wooden platform on large wooden wheels. It could have come from Europe in the dark ages. There were large metal platters with all sorts of grains piled on them. Towards the vendor was a small, metal scale with cast iron kilogram equivalents for measure out the goods. Adams 1kg of peanuts went into the scale and then the guy put a smoking pot on top if it. The pot was a ceramic vessel full of hot coals with a handle and a leather grip. A minute of "toasting" and the peanuts and seasonings went into a freshly rolled newspaper cone. Way cool.
I decided to find another hot samosa, as the one I had the night before was stellar. I reasonably crowed cart presented itself in no time and I went to ordering my snack. The options at this cart were different from the other night and the communication breakdown left me wondering what I was going to get.
The vendor took my 8 rupees with a wet, messy hand and set to making my dish. He selected a samosa from a pile and then smashed it with his hand. It was put into a small bowled formed out of compressed, dried palm leaves. On top of the samosa went a ladel of masalaish stew, some green sauce and some spices. I was given a tiny wooden "spoon" like you'd get at an old icecream parlor. I was nervous because of how this looked and was prepared. It is one thing to get a piping hot, fried samosa, and another altogether to get what I was handed. I decided it was worth whatever was about to happen and I went for it. It was incredible. I wish I knew what it was.
India is finally getting to Michael and he is suffering from the same deep sinus pain that Adam and I went through the week before. It is debilitating and he has been resting in the hotel. We joined him and fell asleep watching National Treasure.
TV here is terrible.
I'm starting to think I was a little hard on Chennai at first. Large cities in India are terrible places to live and try to move about. Hyderabad is a fine example of this phenomenon.
We got up before dawn and headed far out of town, the way we'd come in. We found a remote area with palm trees, scrub brush and big rocky hills near a the town of Malkapur. It was the perfect spot to get some off road shots.
We took the top off one of the Rickshaws and mounted the medium format camera to the framework. We got some stupendous shots of Michael driving a rickshaw as the lead rickshaw towed it through the desert. After he clones out the tow line, the shots will look amazing.
A local came to gawk (even in the middle of nowhere) and we had him trip the shutter for a reenactment shot of our team logo. It was hysterical.
After a long rest that afternoon, Adam and I went to the Charminer district of old Hyderabad. It has one of the oldest mosques in this area, from the 15th century, Mecca Masjib.
This is an obviously heavy Islamic town and it was the first time I'd seen so many burqas. It was like something out of a movie or CNN.
The dense bazaar part of town is known for it's perfume and essential oils. We found a little shop just like we'd read about in a guide book. They had the local specialty we'd read about, "Gil". It was also known as "Miti" in Hindi and is supposed to smell like the wet earth from the first rain after a long, hot summer. It does smell dirt-like, but we're not experts on the seasons here yet.
During the past 2 evenings, motivated by the team's utter lack of intestinal problems the whole trip, I decided to throw caution to the wind and eat street food. Late the previous evening I had a couple samosas, some curried popcorn (mine's better,) and a palak paneer baked pastry. They were all amazing and I was kicking myself I hadn't been braver during our 3 weeks here.
This evening I told Adam about it as we walked about and he got into the spirit. This surprised me as Adam has lived up to his nickname, "control group", as he likes to be the control group in any ingesting experiment that Michael and I undertake. If we order the house special, Adam will invariably say, "I'm going to control group that."
When he ordered some peanuts from a street cart, I was quietly shocked. The cart looked really cool. It was a high, wooden platform on large wooden wheels. It could have come from Europe in the dark ages. There were large metal platters with all sorts of grains piled on them. Towards the vendor was a small, metal scale with cast iron kilogram equivalents for measure out the goods. Adams 1kg of peanuts went into the scale and then the guy put a smoking pot on top if it. The pot was a ceramic vessel full of hot coals with a handle and a leather grip. A minute of "toasting" and the peanuts and seasonings went into a freshly rolled newspaper cone. Way cool.
I decided to find another hot samosa, as the one I had the night before was stellar. I reasonably crowed cart presented itself in no time and I went to ordering my snack. The options at this cart were different from the other night and the communication breakdown left me wondering what I was going to get.
The vendor took my 8 rupees with a wet, messy hand and set to making my dish. He selected a samosa from a pile and then smashed it with his hand. It was put into a small bowled formed out of compressed, dried palm leaves. On top of the samosa went a ladel of masalaish stew, some green sauce and some spices. I was given a tiny wooden "spoon" like you'd get at an old icecream parlor. I was nervous because of how this looked and was prepared. It is one thing to get a piping hot, fried samosa, and another altogether to get what I was handed. I decided it was worth whatever was about to happen and I went for it. It was incredible. I wish I knew what it was.
India is finally getting to Michael and he is suffering from the same deep sinus pain that Adam and I went through the week before. It is debilitating and he has been resting in the hotel. We joined him and fell asleep watching National Treasure.
TV here is terrible.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Indian Universal Truths #2
Indian Universal Truths #2
7)There Are No Unemployed Artists
If a vehicle hauls anything - from hay to humans - it is decorated to the fullest degree. Indian trucks, taxis, rickshaws, peditaxis, even ox carts are covered stem to stern in slogans, initials, pictures, floral designs, and pinstripes. Usually all at once. No space is left undecorated. Even the windshields are bespangled until the barest minimum space is left to operate the vehicle to a passable degree.
Trucks, the masters of the road, in particular have taken the artform to the highest levels. We've seen trucks from every state looming up to us, passing us or heading directly towards us for hours on end, so have a pretty good idea what's out there.
Some advice for aspiring truck artists:
Know your canvas. For most truck artists it is the standard brown flatbed truck the size and roughly the same shape as a Mack truck in the US. Atop of said truck is a headboard like crown that should depict the nickname of the vehicle or home town in large multicolored script. Immediately below that is more text but in one of the local languages and I haven't the foggiest what that says. Maybe it's a translation of the first. You'll have to ask around.
All around the edges of the windshield should be stripes, huge intials of the drivers, maybe even illustrations in cut vinyl of saints, prophets, holymen or even Jesus.
On the grill it is customary to have large, rainbow-colored floral motifs, lotus flowers, flying monkeys, or scroll work designs. The entire grill should be pinstriped in every color of paint the shop has. No scrimping.
The bumper should have a pithy description of the driver's such as, "Road King" (very popular,) "Water King," "Super Fast," "King of the Road," or the trump card - "King of the Kings."
The sides, where possible, should be decorated also. "Diesel" should be stenciled on the gas tank with decorations following the same theme as the front grill.
The mudflaps are good for stencils of praying hands, flowers, elephants or the popular devil's face with extended tongue. I think he wards off demonic flat tires.
The back of the truck is wonderful for getting across a message to the world considering you'll have a large and attentive captive audience behind you as take up both lanes on the "highway". The irony won't be missed on those in the rear of your lumbering, black-smoke-beltching beast with such progressive phrases as, "Save Rain Water" and "Trees = Life". While the obvious "Black Smoke Lungs Choke" will leave folks scratching their heads wondering if you are "for" or "against". You may score more good samaritan points with the topical "Stop Aids" or "Help Childrens" or the like. This is good place to get creative so don't hold back.
Interspersed amongst the politicking it is a good idea to give immediate instructions to those behind you. No truck can be road-ready without "Stop & Proceed" or "Please Sound Horn Please" in large dayglo type.
8) The Same Words Mean Different Things
Britain was here mucking about for almost 300 years unchecked. The locals were finally able to rid themselves but were stuck with remnants of the English language.
Since all the local languages are equally Greek to us, it was confusing when English words in use in India suddenly didn't mean the same thing from one town to the next. It was as if someone was playing a trick on us.
For example, "hotel" in Kerla and Tamil means "hotel". In Telugu it means "restaurant." If you want a hotel you have to ask for a "lodge."
"Meals" is a term for a rice based all encompassing dinner, like a Hungryman from Swansons. It is great to order in a restaurant as you get 15 different cups of stuff to mix with your rice. Leaving Tamil and entering Telugu, we have learned to ask for "Thali".
In the tourist paradise of Kochi, the phrase "As you like" meant that "I have heard your request, understood it, and am now off to complete it for you." In Chennai it meant "I won't tell you the price for this cab ride and just keep saying 'As You Like.' There is an outstanding chance that if you pay whatever you think it's worth I'll get way more money out of the deal." We had to literally threaten to jump out of a cab unless we got a price. Cab drivers will do anything to be your driver for your entire stay, camping out in their car outside your hotel, just for chance to fleece you royally.
In Tamil "Autos" are autorickshaws and "rickshaw" is a bicycle rickshaw. I have no idea what they call the footpowered rickshaws. In Telugu cars are "autos" and autorickshaws are "mini-taxis". There are "4 in all" and "7 in all" sizes of autorickshaws unlike the rest of Southern India although they seem to pack in how ever many they like.
9) Techo is Music to Eat By
There hasn't been a restaurant to date that wasn't blasting the most insipid Euro-Techno loudly. Today was the first day we entered a restuarant and they were playing something with local Indian flair. It was our hotel restaurant which surprised us greatly as they hadn't deveated from the norm prior. We weren't there 2 minutes before they switched to the techno. I went so far as to comment on how the previous music was so nice and ask what it was. Our waiter had no idea and kept smiling.
Maybe the idea is that you'll eat faster and get out.
10) To a Westerner India Looks Swishy
Public displays of affection are strictly forbidden...unless you are men. In a culture where marriages between a man and a woman are rarely for love, the long-lasting emotional relationships in our life, as a man, are with other men. Men aren't allowed to touch women publically if the women were ever seen outside, which they aren't. For men, holding hands, walking with arms around shoulders, riding on a tiny moped, 3 to a seat is quite normal and occuring every 5 feet in India. This cultural norm is expressed by males from the smallest boys to the oldest men. They are sitting in parks, under trees, seemingly cuddling to our Western eyes. There are male beauty parlors everywhere with no female versions that I've seen. Men can where nail polish here. Their bars are all men listening to Euro dance music from the mid-Eighties. They put vinyl slogans on their cars such as "Flamboyant". There are billboards all over town with hunky, nearly naked men selling tiny briefs with the headline, "Prepare To Be Assaulted."
Homosexuality is illegal in India. Acting like it isn't.
7)There Are No Unemployed Artists
If a vehicle hauls anything - from hay to humans - it is decorated to the fullest degree. Indian trucks, taxis, rickshaws, peditaxis, even ox carts are covered stem to stern in slogans, initials, pictures, floral designs, and pinstripes. Usually all at once. No space is left undecorated. Even the windshields are bespangled until the barest minimum space is left to operate the vehicle to a passable degree.
Trucks, the masters of the road, in particular have taken the artform to the highest levels. We've seen trucks from every state looming up to us, passing us or heading directly towards us for hours on end, so have a pretty good idea what's out there.
Some advice for aspiring truck artists:
Know your canvas. For most truck artists it is the standard brown flatbed truck the size and roughly the same shape as a Mack truck in the US. Atop of said truck is a headboard like crown that should depict the nickname of the vehicle or home town in large multicolored script. Immediately below that is more text but in one of the local languages and I haven't the foggiest what that says. Maybe it's a translation of the first. You'll have to ask around.
All around the edges of the windshield should be stripes, huge intials of the drivers, maybe even illustrations in cut vinyl of saints, prophets, holymen or even Jesus.
On the grill it is customary to have large, rainbow-colored floral motifs, lotus flowers, flying monkeys, or scroll work designs. The entire grill should be pinstriped in every color of paint the shop has. No scrimping.
The bumper should have a pithy description of the driver's such as, "Road King" (very popular,) "Water King," "Super Fast," "King of the Road," or the trump card - "King of the Kings."
The sides, where possible, should be decorated also. "Diesel" should be stenciled on the gas tank with decorations following the same theme as the front grill.
The mudflaps are good for stencils of praying hands, flowers, elephants or the popular devil's face with extended tongue. I think he wards off demonic flat tires.
The back of the truck is wonderful for getting across a message to the world considering you'll have a large and attentive captive audience behind you as take up both lanes on the "highway". The irony won't be missed on those in the rear of your lumbering, black-smoke-beltching beast with such progressive phrases as, "Save Rain Water" and "Trees = Life". While the obvious "Black Smoke Lungs Choke" will leave folks scratching their heads wondering if you are "for" or "against". You may score more good samaritan points with the topical "Stop Aids" or "Help Childrens" or the like. This is good place to get creative so don't hold back.
Interspersed amongst the politicking it is a good idea to give immediate instructions to those behind you. No truck can be road-ready without "Stop & Proceed" or "Please Sound Horn Please" in large dayglo type.
8) The Same Words Mean Different Things
Britain was here mucking about for almost 300 years unchecked. The locals were finally able to rid themselves but were stuck with remnants of the English language.
Since all the local languages are equally Greek to us, it was confusing when English words in use in India suddenly didn't mean the same thing from one town to the next. It was as if someone was playing a trick on us.
For example, "hotel" in Kerla and Tamil means "hotel". In Telugu it means "restaurant." If you want a hotel you have to ask for a "lodge."
"Meals" is a term for a rice based all encompassing dinner, like a Hungryman from Swansons. It is great to order in a restaurant as you get 15 different cups of stuff to mix with your rice. Leaving Tamil and entering Telugu, we have learned to ask for "Thali".
In the tourist paradise of Kochi, the phrase "As you like" meant that "I have heard your request, understood it, and am now off to complete it for you." In Chennai it meant "I won't tell you the price for this cab ride and just keep saying 'As You Like.' There is an outstanding chance that if you pay whatever you think it's worth I'll get way more money out of the deal." We had to literally threaten to jump out of a cab unless we got a price. Cab drivers will do anything to be your driver for your entire stay, camping out in their car outside your hotel, just for chance to fleece you royally.
In Tamil "Autos" are autorickshaws and "rickshaw" is a bicycle rickshaw. I have no idea what they call the footpowered rickshaws. In Telugu cars are "autos" and autorickshaws are "mini-taxis". There are "4 in all" and "7 in all" sizes of autorickshaws unlike the rest of Southern India although they seem to pack in how ever many they like.
9) Techo is Music to Eat By
There hasn't been a restaurant to date that wasn't blasting the most insipid Euro-Techno loudly. Today was the first day we entered a restuarant and they were playing something with local Indian flair. It was our hotel restaurant which surprised us greatly as they hadn't deveated from the norm prior. We weren't there 2 minutes before they switched to the techno. I went so far as to comment on how the previous music was so nice and ask what it was. Our waiter had no idea and kept smiling.
Maybe the idea is that you'll eat faster and get out.
10) To a Westerner India Looks Swishy
Public displays of affection are strictly forbidden...unless you are men. In a culture where marriages between a man and a woman are rarely for love, the long-lasting emotional relationships in our life, as a man, are with other men. Men aren't allowed to touch women publically if the women were ever seen outside, which they aren't. For men, holding hands, walking with arms around shoulders, riding on a tiny moped, 3 to a seat is quite normal and occuring every 5 feet in India. This cultural norm is expressed by males from the smallest boys to the oldest men. They are sitting in parks, under trees, seemingly cuddling to our Western eyes. There are male beauty parlors everywhere with no female versions that I've seen. Men can where nail polish here. Their bars are all men listening to Euro dance music from the mid-Eighties. They put vinyl slogans on their cars such as "Flamboyant". There are billboards all over town with hunky, nearly naked men selling tiny briefs with the headline, "Prepare To Be Assaulted."
Homosexuality is illegal in India. Acting like it isn't.
Day 16: The Long Drive to Hyderabad
Day 16
We woke early and hit the buffet at the cafe in our Quality Inn hotel in Vijayawada. It was refreshing to get some variance in breakfast options and one gets so tired of vadas, burnt toast and various chutneys. Today the had something they were calling "hashbrowns". They weren't what you expect to get if you ordered "hashbrowns" but enjoyable nonetheless.
283KM is how far Hyderabad is from the town of Vijayawada. It would mean a long day of driving but we were confident that it was doable.
The pleasantness of the coastal National Highway 5, a well maintained toll road, were left far behind for the grueling mess they call National Highway 9. Were 5 had 4 lanes divided by a well-kept, flowering shrub planted median, 9 is only 2 lanes of opposing traffic, studded with potholes the like we hadn't seen since Tamil Nadu poor excuse for a road. Gone also were the curbs, helpful signage and a wide and safe shoulder in case you had to pull over.
It was an exhausting day of intense driving where we were run off the road many times by huge trucks. The traffic in Hyderabad to end the day was the worst we've driven in and may ever drive in.
The long day gave lots of time to think about India. It's time for a round 2 of India Universal Truths.
We woke early and hit the buffet at the cafe in our Quality Inn hotel in Vijayawada. It was refreshing to get some variance in breakfast options and one gets so tired of vadas, burnt toast and various chutneys. Today the had something they were calling "hashbrowns". They weren't what you expect to get if you ordered "hashbrowns" but enjoyable nonetheless.
283KM is how far Hyderabad is from the town of Vijayawada. It would mean a long day of driving but we were confident that it was doable.
The pleasantness of the coastal National Highway 5, a well maintained toll road, were left far behind for the grueling mess they call National Highway 9. Were 5 had 4 lanes divided by a well-kept, flowering shrub planted median, 9 is only 2 lanes of opposing traffic, studded with potholes the like we hadn't seen since Tamil Nadu poor excuse for a road. Gone also were the curbs, helpful signage and a wide and safe shoulder in case you had to pull over.
It was an exhausting day of intense driving where we were run off the road many times by huge trucks. The traffic in Hyderabad to end the day was the worst we've driven in and may ever drive in.
The long day gave lots of time to think about India. It's time for a round 2 of India Universal Truths.
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