Hyderabad

I know I said I was done backtracking, but I'm not. There is just so much happening I don't have time to write it all down! January 1st-6th consisted of orientations, shopping, police registration, meetings, tours of places, and a really REALLY confusing class scheduling process. In fact I still don't know for sure what I'm taking. India has a way of dragging out registration forever. But I'm dealing with it okay. Usually I like to have a completely set schedule all the time; this has been good for my patience building.



Saturday, the 7th, was awesome; a lot happened that day. First was Chowmahalla Palace, which is now a museum. It was absolutely beautiful, and had some great photographs of past royal families.

The King's Thrown at Chowmahalla Palace.

Next was Charminar, which produced some pretty awesome views of the city below. We climbed up really steep, narrow stairs to the top. (*don't do this if you are claustrophobic!) Once on top, it was awesome though. Charminar is the center of four streets meeting, almost like a round-a-bout. There were vendors selling everything from fruit to clothing to jewelery. (Hyderabad is known as the City of Pearls). After climbing down, Rahul took us around the shops. I learned very quickly that there is no such thing as window shopping in India; if you go into a store you have to know what you want. I did buy my first bangles though, helping me feel like I fit in a little more.

Charminar was built for the gods, in hopes it would end the famine.

I crossed the street and didn't die! :)

We then drove to this wonderful lakeside eating place, called Eat Street. It was fabulous! They had all these lunch places, including Subway, Pizza Hut, Vegetarian restaurants, etc. In the middle of the lake stands the Buddha Statue. We would have gone to see it up close, but the ferries don't run until night. The city surrounds the lake. It reminded me a lot of New York City in a way. Rahul told us that it's a great place for a date, which became very obvious, but I learned myself that it's also a place for men to come check out the ladies. haha. When the girls and I went to get some ice cream, a man came up to us, introduced himself, asked us what we were doing in Hyderabad, and then paid of ALL of our ice cream as a 'Welcome to Hyderabad'-gift. It was actually really sweet :) I was sad to leave Eat Street. I will definately be going there again.

Golconda Fort was our final stop. Oh boy was this interesting. The fort in itself was absolutely astonishing. Beautiful. It's built on top of and into rocks of the mountain. It was a tough trek up to the top, our guide was practically running and the stairs were about 3 feet high, but the exercise felt good. But the photographs...I have never had my picture taken so many times in my life. Oh wow. It  was amazing. Sometimes people tried to hide it, other times they just walked up to us and snapped a couple shots. It was super different. We all didn't really know what to think of it. Ryan did point out that maybe my skin-colored pants made it look like I was walking around pant-less...(I had seen Indian women wearing them, so I bought some, not thinking of the skin tone difference haha) and perhaps that was why people were taking so many pictures. hahaha. It was a very exciting day, but it didn't end there.

This photograph doesn't do Golconda justice. The size just couldn't be captured by my camera.

Something I adore about India: ancient ruins towering over new cities.

That night we went to a club in the old-town Hyderabad. It was really classy, a bit pricy actually, but nothing compared to the US. It was a fun night, lots of music, dancing, and people. The dancing was actually quite humorous to me, as Indians kinda just bounce around and look like mini-Bollywood movies. Going out made me miss Billy a lot though.

On Sunday the 8th, a couple girls and I went to Shalparamam, a craft village nearby. It was absolutely fabulous. I haggled with people, (which was actually quite enjoyable), ate chocolate, got some new henna, and saw a lot of cute Indian families. It was great.