Hyderabad

So I actually just came back today from a few days in Malaysia, but I'll have to blog a bit in pieces to catch up! So this entry will be about my trip to Hyderabad July 2-4.
I flew to Hyderabad (2-hour flight south of Delhi) on Saturday morning (the 2nd) and caught a taxi into the city to meet my Tufts friend, Maggie, and her new husband, Mohit. We then took a bus (my first time on a bus in India! protected by the safety of male-female segregated seating!) and a rickshaw (fitting me, Maggie, Mohit, and their friend Sam in the back) for a snug, long ride to the other side of the city to have an amazingly delicious home-made lunch of specialties of the region, Andhra Pradesh, at Maggie's pastor's house. My first time eating Indian food with my hands (or hand rather, and only the right one to be proper, not that dirty left hand - the "personal" i.e. toilet hand) - curries, dal, rice, and all! Eating lunch in someone's home is an affair of a few hours, complete with a siesta - yes, they will offer up their couches and beds for you to take a good nap after eating! Maggie and Mohit then moved along to their B&B wedding gift at a fancy hotel in town and I headed to my own hotel. Night started to fall and the only exploring I did at that point was to buy some fun lip balm (I like to buy local flavors everywhere I go, who doesn't) and contact solution (which involves a lot of circling to different chemists [tiny drug counters] and finally an optician's office where a clerk needs to hop on his bike and go somewhere to find you some non-brand-name solution while you wait for 20 minutes and the little old man behind the counter tries to explain the mysteries of the retina). I'm still stuffed from lunch but have to order in some biryani - the specialty of the region - rice that is infused with the flavors of marinated meats that it is steamed with... really nice, though was way too much food for me after such a big lunch feast.
The next day, Maggie and I met up and had a hearty breakfast of naan, rice, and several different curries. We then went over to the old part of the city to get me some "jootis" (little flat leather shoes) and "chapals" (sandals made of camel leather). That Maggie is a hundred times better at bargaining than I am. We hopped into the tiniest little bicycle rickshaw - likely meant to hold one baby and not two adults - down to the Charminar, the big landmark in Hyderabad - a big structure with four minarets and arches all around. We climbed up to the top to get a great view of the hustle and bustle of old Hyderabad. I asked Maggie whether it was OK to take pictures inside, and she said "of course - people may even ask to take a picture of you!" Which one guy did - and Maggie scolded him in Hindi and told him we were not a tourist attraction. From there, we walked through alleys filled with bangle shops to Chowmahalla Palace, a beautiful 200-yr-old royal estate, and nice reprieve from the business of the bazaars and chaos of traffic and people.
On Day 3 in Hyderabad, I went with a CHAI colleague from our Hyderabad office, Anita, to visit a hospital in Nalgonda (2.5 hrs from Hyderabad by car) in which they'll be building a nutrition rehab center. It is always very interesting (and sometimes hopeful or sometimes alarming) to see the conditions and meet the staff of different hospitals in rural areas. Once we got back to Hyderabad in the afternoon, we honored the 4th of July at a restaurant that served us hot dogs, burgers (lamb - no beef of course), Hawaiian pizza, apple pie, and banana bread!
Soon afterward, I had to hop back on a flight back to Delhi. Overall, a great trip to Hyderabad with some sight-seeing, field visit, and good fun with Maggie and Anita! They also were great in giving me a refresher course in haggling and fending off weird men - just what I needed halfway through my summer in India.

I'll save my trip to Malaysia for the next entry!
:)