And so I'm here again.
The mission is near to the same as my last trip. For the next two weeks I'll be working in my company's Hyderabad office, extending the training of the same group of employees I enjoyed working with last year.
The trip over began on Friday in the early evening with a repeat of the itinerary from last year -- about 8 hours in the air to Frankfurt, Germany, a layover, and then about 8.5 or so hours to Hyderabad. This time there was no delay in Frankfurt and the plane to Hyderabad was less crowded, resulting in a much faster trip through immigration, baggage, and customs.
Here's a picture of the Goethe Bar in Terminal B of the Frankfurt Airport. There's a large sculpture of the famous writer in the middle of the bar.
There's obviously much more to say about Hyderabad than what I wrote last year -- I'm just not sure how much more I've got to say. But I'll try to keep it fresh, even as there's a serious sense of deja vu about being here. I'm in the same hotel, the Taj Banjara, which I found friendly and hospitable last year. I was hoping to stay at the Taj Krishna up the road -- the bigger brother to this one -- if for no other reason than the change of scenery, but this will do fine. I'm one floor down and one room over from where I stayed last year. The room is identical except it's a mirror image to the last one which was a bit strange at first. Still, I avoided waking up in the middle of the night and turning left for the bathroom only to find myself in a closet so I guess I'll adapt.
Of course it's hard to wake up in the middle of the night when all you got was 3 hours of sleep. The job today is to avoid an afternoon nap that lasts for 6 hours.
The hotel looked good in the early morning light.
Another difference between the last trip and this one is the season. April and May are the "hot" season in Hyderabad. Daily high temperatures are usually over 100 degrees and we'll reach that any time now -- it just turned 99. The dewpoint is 66 degrees. 'Nuff said. Forget about frying an egg on the pavement -- you could hard boil the egg if you left it out in the sun in its shell! I'm sure I'll have more to say about the heat. You know, stuff like "It was hot again today".
Anyway, I took a walk early this morning (when it was only 88 or so) and took some pictures.
There's a small Hindu shrine of sorts along the driveway to the hotel. I passed it daily during the last trip and still don't know why it's there or what it signifies. The fellow tending the grounds nearby tried to explain it to me but he spoke no English, although he was kind enough to pose near part of the shrine.
And while walking around for a bit I couldn't help but be struck by the different sounds the birds here make -- to say they chirp doesn't cut it. I made a sound recording but the file is over 6mb and I don't want to kill my bandwidth. I'll see if I can't figure out how to slim that down. In the meantime, here are two example of the winged beasties. Any amateur birdwatchers out there who want to establish their cred -- well here's your chance. What are they? Leave a comment.
Both pictures are cropped and I think I can do a better job of that so I'll have to experiment a bit -- I'm working on a Mac and I'm an native Windows user so I'll have to see what I can do. Neither pic is exactly in focus either. What can I say -- I'm working on it.
