Hyderabad: Day 1

The ten-hour sleeper train from Aurangabad to Hyderabad was a bad idea. (I know, I know. Big surprise.) But not for the reasons one would expect.
The cot was comfortable (short, but one can't blame the Lilliputians) and the train was quiet and relatively smooth. The problem was the air conditioner.
In India, as I'm sure is the case in other developing countries, air conditioning is as much a comfort as it is a sign of luxury. So, it's often blasted (the less you can feel your extremities, the more luxurious you are). The logic of blasting the air conditioning when the "winter" has driven every local to wear hats and/or ski masks (seriously) is beyond me, but India isn't always a logical place. Another example of the country's impeccable logic: the museum we visited today (home to 1 million wide-ranging objects previously under the ownership of a former local sovereign ruler) banned cameras but had its own food court and snack bars throughout.
Also, the pillows and sheets provided by on the train were definitely not clean, but that comes with the territory. One thing I really like about the trains (normal and sleeper ones) is that each train has a handful of guys who patrol the cars (in the morning on sleeper cars) offering hot chai, coffee and snacks. There's nothing better than waking up to hot chai after a night of being frozen stiff and pissed off by the guy with the "Hari Ram, Hari Ram, Hari Krishna, Hari Ram" sing-song cell ring.
Anyway, after we arrived and went to our hotel, we visited the aforementioned museum, which is home to the largest one-man collection of antiques in the world. (If you believe Wikipedia. And I know you do.) The items in the collection ranged from tea sets from around the world to dozens of clocks to impressionist paintings and renaissance-style sculptures of ancient Roman gods. It's amazing that any one person could own so much stuff.
We also visited Chowmahalla Palace, where the line of Nazims (the local sovereign leaders) lived until India gained its independence in the mid-1900's. I can't post the photos now, but they had a room with 19 chandeliers and owned a line of cars including an early-1900's Rolls Royce. Extravagant.
The last place we visited was Charminar Bazaar, a 400-year-old masjid around which a huge shopping area has sprouted. Here are some photos (click the above link to see the masjid itself):




I'm being kicked out of this Internet Cafe, so that's it for now.. Tomorrow, we visit Ramoji Film City, the world's largest film studio complex (where a bunch of movies are made in Hindi and some local dialects).
To my Bates friends: I saw some monkeys yesterday. I did not touch them.
To everyone: I'm introducing two recurring counters to this blog.
Times I've been compared to Abhishek Bachan: 2. (I really don't see it.)
Days in India without having yet found myself or my spirituality: 5.

Well, That Was Close

My parents and I left the Mumbai train station the day before yesterday, about eight hours before the shooting there began. We're all fine, just sad and disappointed.

This first blog post is going to have to be pretty short and crappy, I leave on an overnight "sleeper" train to Hyderabad -- a big tech and film center -- in three hours. Also, these first few posts will be pretty chronological since I haven't been here long enough to have any insight and since all I'm doing is the tourist stuff (rapid-fire tours, etc.) with my parents.

I landed in Mumbai on Tuesday The flight was broken into two approximately nine-hour legs (San Francisco to London and London to Mumbai) with a seven-hour wait in London. It sucked, of course, but I did meet a cool Portuguese couple who spent four months in Mumbai in 2006 and were on their way back. In the interim two years they rented out two houses, one of which they built. (Random aside: the guys who run the Internet cafe where I'm writing this are blasting "Lean Back.")

I bought a cell phone the night that I landed (e-mail me for the number). I was also reacquainted with Indian traffic. Everyone walks on the road (and highway) and they're always just inches from the cars. Also, there are no rules, except honk your horn a whole lot. If a car horn in the U.S. is a rare slap on the head, a horn here is an "excuse me, I'm about to run into you."

On Wednesday, we traveled to Aurangabad in Central(ish) India. It was home to the last Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb, so there's a fort, mausoleum, etc. Also, nearby are some 2,000 year old religious caves (carved out of mountains), which I will write more about in my next post. One temple I visited today was built about a thousand years ago over a span of 150 years with something like 700 workers.

I've met some interesting people, including a man who owns a factory in Aurangabad (he makes carbide and high-speed tools for the auto industry). He purchased his land here at about 50 cents per square meter in 1992 and now it's worth about 10 dollars. His English was great, but he's never left India. I also met a Spanish camerawoman who works on a TV news program for Spain's public access channel and a pair of retired geologists who worked for India's official geological survey.

Oh, and globalization is in full swing. They now have Jethro Tull out here:



I'll post real photos in my next post (which, I promise, won't be so awful).