Feb 3 – Feb 6: Hyderabad

We were up at 4:30 to be outside by 5am to catch our ride to the airport. A huge bonus about doing this so early is that there’s NO TRAFFIC! So we made it there with lots of time to spare, flight was on time all good wheeeeee then bam we were in Hyderabad!

It’s beautiful here, hot sunny and flowers everywhere! My friend Siva picked us up at the airport and dropped us off at our hostel. We are just going to stay here tonight, and then the next two nights stay at his place.

After a shower and a nap Siva and his brother picked us up on scooters (WHEEE) and we went out for some food. Hyderabad is apparently famous for its biryani, so I had some chicken biryani, it WAS really good! My stomach was not happy with me the next morning though, so I will go back to not eating meat while here lol.

Feb 4: Sitting at the breakfast table, this guy sits down beside me, and I’m like holy crap this guy is almost an exact replica of Where’s Waldo, so I told him that and THEN HE SAID HIS NAME IS WALTER. Well. We both had a pretty good laugh about this.

Today we are going to stay at Siva’s house for a couple nights so he is coming to pick us up.

Siva’s Mom welcomed us into her home, and fed us chai and home cooked meals. She doesn’t speak any english so our conversations consisted of mutual smiles, hand gestures, and laughing.

 

We met up with our friend Kupil who we met in Delhi and went out for a couple beers and some live music at a place called Heart Cup Cafe.

Feb 5: In the morning we went out for a walk, Siva took us to a place that makes Iranian Chai, similar to Indian Chia.. OMG IT WAS SO FREAKING GOOD. We also had some fresh pressed sugar cane juice. Walking around in Hyderabad is way more chill than walking around in Varanasi.. People still stare and stuff but you aren’t getting approached every 10 seconds.
(Actually Siva lives in a nearby city called Secunderabad and the whole time he was saying it I thought it was called Second Hyderabad… haaahahaha. )

They have a maid that comes in the morning and does laundry and cleans the floor. (This is a foreign thing for us, but it’s really common for average families to have maids in India.) Her name is Mummata, super sweet lady. An interesting thing we noticed is that after she is done, she draws a design on the ground in front of the gate to the house.. we had been seeing these designs all over the place and were wondering what they were.

After lunch Siva took us to Golconda Fort in Hyderabad.. The view from the top was amazing. When we were at the top.. A few people wanted to take selfies with us, but that kind of started a chain reaction and this large crowd formed and next thing we knew we were in everyone’s family photo!

Feb 6: Our train is at 11:40 this morning so after breakfast it’s pretty much time to head to the train station! It is supposed to get to Kochi tomorrow around 1:30 PM.