Who Can Really Say?

Things are winding down. This is my last night in the hotel. I've been taking pictures here for almost 2 weeks and today I was either lucky, or experience in the setting helped a bit. These shots are a slice of Hyderabad -- my slice -- the one I see every day.

Well, almost every day. This is the first time I've seen a traffic stop in progress. It's a universal language.

This is a traffic stop in the making. By my guess there are 9 passengers and a driver in this taxi.

I've tried to show a few pictures of some of the poor, very poor people along the route to work. This is as poor as it gets. He's there in the same spot every day.

Hyderabad also has a dog problem -- wild dogs, that is. In the last few days a mom and her three pups found a spot to sleep in the 105+ degree heat, amongst the granite boulders in the garden outside the office. Mom is on the left.

But it's not all bleak and grim, traffic and overcrowding and desperate poverty. Next to that is the promise of change and growth. A new office building sits beyond aluminum barracks housing the laborers who bake in this heat to build them. There's the stone upon which Hyderabad is literally built, and the flowering bushes and trees that dot nearly every street. The larger city beckons beyond. I haven't truly seen Hyderabad -- I've seen two end points and the route in between. It can be harsh but it's also beautiful.

Another spectacular sunset was growing tonight as I left the office. I couldn't get an angle on it -- there was always something in the way. My bad luck, but there was a magnificent end to the day for someone in Hyderabad.

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My time here is short. Two days from now I'll be standing on a line in the Hyderabad Airport waiting for a ticket, watching someone rifle through my luggage, or sitting in what passes for a seat until my flight is called. The new airport is scheduled to open in a year or so and it won't happen soon enough.

I scrolled through my pictures to see what's left to post. I don't want to repeat myself but if popular demand compels, I have plenty of shots of those funny little yellow taxis with unfinished buildings in the background draped in bright blue tarps.

I've pretty much carried my camera wherever I go on the theory that a) you can't take a picture if you don't have a camera with you and b) hefting darn near 5 pounds of camera all day long will tone my biceps. Which led me to these two shots in the hotel lobby while waiting for travel companions to join me for dinner. The first is -- well, the lobby.

There are wide, round, shallow brass(?) bowls on the lobby floor near the front desk, filled with water, flower petals floating on the surface, each with three candles glowing. I don't know if they're simply decorative or if they signify something particular. But they are pretty.

Which led to wandering outdoors, and this picture of the fountain in the middle of the lake.

More wandering outdoors later.

Last year I posted a number of shots of tent cities where the deeply poor live. We're driving the same route to the office each day as we did back then and I have to say that there are fewer of them along the way today than there were last year. Which is not to suggest that there are fewer deeply poor people in Hyderabad -- only that they've moved, or been moved, to somewhere else. Here are two shots of what we do see each day.

On the other hand, we also drive through one of the wealthier neighborhoods in Hyderabad, called Jubilee Hills. This house is as ostentatious in its own way as anything. It's poured concrete which, I'd think, is hardly an aesthetic value (unless that's how the owner made the money to build it I suppose) but the key bit is this: it's built so high on a hill that you can only access the house via the rather obvious elevator shaft.

And then, one night after dinner I wandered out onto the hotel grounds to find something new to shoot. Here's what I found.

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I said I'd post more photos of flora and fauna. There's that and a bit more. These were taken over the last few days.

Here is a closeup of some flowering bushes near the lake in front of the hotel.

There were two ducks playing in front of the hotel the other day, walking back and forth in front of the door, chasing each other.

Nearby on the lawn was a goose. That is a goose, right?

Talk to the hand?

"Honey, can you get some meat while you're out?" (Look closely in the window).

On the way to the Fort and the Seven Tombs last Saturday we passed oxen pulling a cart loaded with grasses. Two pics.

This tree is on the grounds of the Seven Tombs. I want one like this in my yard!

Where do snakes live? In a den? Whatever, here's home sweet home.

You don't see too many camels in Hyderabad. We encountered one during a drive through the Old City.

This is almost copyright infringement. Someone call legal! Or George Costanza.

And finally, this statue sits in front of one of the government buildings in Hyderabad. No introductions are necessary.

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Not much time and not much else to say. Things are going fine at the office. I've been feeling good since I was sick last week. It was hot again today. See what i mean?

Last year I posted a few pictures of the buffaloes that freely walk the streets of Hyderabad on their way to and from their watering or their grazing spots. And I do mean freely. Here's a shot I took last week.

Yesterday, though, I saw something new. Our previous encounters have always been on narrow roads with slow moving traffic. Today a group of them (small herd?) decided to cross one of the busy 4 lane boulevards that pass as major arteries where traffic can reach 40mph (which is fast for Hyderabad traffic).

All of which raises the question, should you play chicken with a buffalo?

More fauna, and perhaps some flora to follow.

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And on the eighth day he read.

But here's last night's sunset.

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As I mentioned in my last post, near Golconda Fort are a group of tombs of six of the seven Qutb Shahi dynasty shah's and some of their family members. It's not easy for me to remember which tomb belongs to which shah so I'll take a stab at it. Future Googlers beware.

This one I'm clear on. It belongs to Abdullah Qutb Shah (Qutb is pronounced "kutub"), the sixth and last of the seven to be entombed on this site. He died in 1672 after holding power during a time of decline. Eight years later the kingdom was conquered by Aurangzeb, a rather unpleasant fellow who imprisoned Abdullah's successor Abul Hasan Qutb Shah until he died in 1687.

The next tomb is possibly the most beautiful. It belongs to a woman, Hayat Bakshi Begum, I believe, the daughter of the fourth shah, the wife of the fifth, and the mother of the sixth. She was obviously much loved to receive this monument.

Here is the marker for her tomb -- she is actually buried in the basement, below this spot. The man in the picture pulled back the drape to reveal the detail.

Outside her tomb is perhaps the world's smallest mosque, said by Arafat to have been built in only 24 hours. Why the rush? I don't know.

Now, the big guy, the most famous of the Qutb Shahi dynasty king's, Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, the founder of Hyderabad (and the father of Hayat Bakshi Begum). His tomb is the largest and and is built on a platform raised above the others.

We walked down to the basement to see his final resting place.

And here he is.

One thing I couldn't help noticing as I walked over the many acres covering the site are the elaborate gardens that have fallen into disrepair. I don't know whether it's lack of money or interest but it's obvious that the landscaping has suffered from neglect. Here is a pool long since emptied and now strewn with weeds and trash.

But imagine the possibilities!

The picture I forgot to take is of the unfinished tomb of the seventh and last shah who's final resting place, obviously, is not here. It's shows the dome half built with brickwork exposed. Pretty cool, especially after observing so many finished examples. Complaints will be heard tonight down in the hotel bar for as long as you're willing to buy.

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As I type this it's Sunday morning, but this post describes Saturday and I'm only now catching up. I was originally going to do some sight seeing on Sunday but those plans changed just before mid-day, and so under the auspices of our driver/guide Arafat I went to see the ruins of the Golconda Fort and the Seven Tombs of the Qutb Shahi dynasty nearby.

The earliest fort dates to the 12th century and was made of mud and clay. The Qutb Shahi dynasty was founded in the early 1500's, and it took them decades to build the stone fort that stands in ruins today. The fort sits on a granite hill almost 400 feet high. It's actually four forts surrounded by an outer and inner walls over 6 miles long. Some of the walls sport ramparts and battlements with ancient cannons. A tour of the fort takes hours and if you're willing includes climbing nearly 400 steps to the very top. Given the 100 degree plus heat I passed, wimp that I am.

But here are some shots of the fort from a distance.

We enter the first gate.

And get the first view of the top of the hill.

Then we drive through another gate.

Here's a closeup of the top of the hill.

Pulling back on the zoom shows how far away we still are.

And another zoomed shot.

This photo shows two walls -- I'm not sure how many layers of walls there are, but I think they'd do a pretty good job of keeping out the Orcs.

The town of Golconda sits inside the perimeter of at least some of the walls. We passed several Indian Army installations to get to the fort, and some of them are also inside the walls. This picture shows barracks on the right, one of the walls on the left, and a fabulous pair of trees.

So -- not much else to say about the Golconda Fort. It was the seat of the Qutb Shahi dynasty until the 4th Shah, Muhammad Quli Qutb, moved the dynasty to the new city he decided to build, Hyderabad. I wish I'd been able to take the tour.

It's off to breakfast for me. I'll post my pictures of the Seven Tombs later today.

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I've been working for the weekend like you won't believe. After all, there was no last weekend for me, unless you go back 2 weeks ago. I lost half a day of the actual last weekend in time zone travel, and woke up bleary in the middle of the day Sunday. I crashed and burned on Wednesday but made a fortunate recovery by tonight, Friday. Now I feel like I'm kickin' butt and takin' names, even if that only means I'm sitting in a hotel room in the so-called Silicon Valley of India, Hyderabad.

And so it goes. Last year I mentioned how pleasant, helpful, and solicitous the staff is here at the Taj Banjara. They remain that way six months later, to a fault. I may be a legend in my own mind but if I hung around here long enough I'd start to believe it.

Upon arrival I was surprised how many of the staff recognized me. "Hello Mr. F___! How are you? It is so good to see you again!" Their smiles stretched from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal. Well. Maybe they're well coached, but if that's so they do a good job of it.

So the weekend beckons and my plans are in flux. The Master Driver, Arafat, is off with his family tomorrow so I'll spend the day around the hotel grounds. I may explore some of the near environs beyond. It's not so much that I fear for my safety in the greater city as that I'm allergic to heat stroke. On Sunday Arafat will take me on another tour to sites I didn't see last year. I'm not sure which so you'll just have to wait to find out.

On a side note, I've shortened the length of the main page that loads when you visit the blog. If you're trying to catch up and the earlier entries have scrolled off the bottom, all you need do is return to the top of the page and click on the link to the right for "India 2007". You'll get them all. Also, most of the recently posted photos can be clicked to get a larger example of the picture. Go ahead, do it -- make my day and kill my bandwidth. Really!

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I passed on the farewell dinner for some of my traveling companions tonight and will go to bed shortly. I'm over the worst of whatever it was that stabbed me in the gut yesterday but I'm not feeling great. Yet.

I figured out earlier tonight how to bulk process photos to make them easier to upload here, so without further ado, here are some shots of the drive from the hotel to the office today.

Each day we pass the Manhattan Cafeteria. Did the proprietor live in NYC?

A few more commercial establishments. A grocery store.

A place to buy clothes . . . seem familiar?

Hyderabad's version of Starbucks is Barista. There's a Barista in the lobby of the building where the office is located too. The coffee is good, and it doesn't cost $4.00 for a cup -- more like 30 cents!

Much of Hyderabad is really old. And it's growing so fast that there is much that's very new. And the rest is under construction. Note the rough cut trees used for scaffolding.

And much of that construction is draped in blue tarpaulins. I'm not kidding -- there must be square miles of this stuff covering buildings all along the route. So many of these buildings seem half built with no apparent activity at the site.

And finally, a distant shot of the office complex way on top of that hill. Next to -- you know -- more new construction.

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I'm feeling a bit better and hope to keep a light breakfast where it belongs - down there and not up here. So I'm off to work and with any luck will check in later.

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I was sick this morning. I stayed at the hotel the entire day and slept for almost 8 hours of it. Now it's after 7:00 PM and I still feel rotten.

I had "travelers diarreha" on my last trip and and this is very different. This is more like a stomach flu. Fortunately for me I've got the folks at the Penn Travel Medicine office (of the UPENN Health System) to fall back on, something I idiotically forgot on my last trip.

If I feel up to it later today I may scan through my pictures and post another. But just now there's nothing more to add. With some virtual medical assistance perhaps I'll soon feel virtually better. Who can really say?

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I spent more than half the day speechifying to the group I'm here to train. (To those who know me, calm down and stop shuddering). We were in a small conference room examining training materials projected from a PC onto a screen. To make matters worse, I prepared the training materials too. (Ok -- you can start shuddering again). It went well although my throat felt hoarse at times. I don't know how I got through two days of similar presentations last year when I had an awful cold.

We broke up in mid-afternoon as I hit the jet lag wall again. And now it's 11:00 PM and I swear I feel so tired I must be crazy. Or it could be the magic elixir energy drink I consumed with engaging conversation over dinner.

Anyway, I went outside for a short walk in the scorching heat carrying my oversized camera and at one point tried to take a shot of the building where the office is located. The complex consists of several buildings, each of them extraordinarily colorful by US standards, but then much of India is like that. I thought a shot of the building might look good and was stopped from taking a picture by a security guard who told me photos were not allowed for security reasons. I wanted to explain that it's ok -- that I'd keep the photos in a small zip-locked plastic bag, but thought better of it.

But at the end of the day we were late in leaving the office, late enough to catch the sunset lighting up the sky. So here's a shot I took from across the street.

Now the open land across the street isn't especially pretty -- it's undeveloped and used by buffaloes to graze and stray dogs to do what stray dogs do. But if I can make it look like that, maybe they ought to let me take a picture of the buildings, eh? Click on the image above for a larger sized picture.

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Woke up. Fell out of bed. Dragged a comb across my head.

Well, except for the last part.

I had a decent night's sleep -- 7 or so hours, so I'm hoping to feel better this afternoon. I don't have much else to say. It was fun returning to the Hyderabad office and seeing my friends here again. But due to the work schedule, etc., there wasn't much time to take pictures and I was so tired last night I had nothing more to add. So I'll just throw up another picture before I jump into the shower.

This was taken from the balcony accessible from the office. It's a shot of the campus showing workers on their lunch break, taking a casual stroll in 100+ degree heat! The women in the picture are representative of all the women I see at work, with long black hair wearing long, flowing, colorful garments (I'm not sure of what they are called, but they are not sari's.)

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I'm exhausted from the jet lag and so have little to add today. But in honor of National Tax Freedom Day, you might like a contrary view as seen on a car in Hyderabad last night.

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Just a few pics I took last night walking around outside the hotel after dinner.

Dell held a reception outdoors at the hotel last night. Preparations were nearly complete when I shot this.

I walked down the drive towards the street past the Hindu shrine again.

Stepping to the side a bit, here's what the hotel looks like at night.

I walked back up to the hotel and stopped in at the small club, where loud Western pop-style rock was playing while the video screen showed . . . Daffy Duck? I couldn't make it up if I tried.

It's Monday morning here -- off to work!

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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.

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I found out today I'll be returning to India later this month, arriving at midnight on Sunday the 29th for a two week stay. I'm looking forward to it, not taking into account the brutal travel and various potential ailments, of course.

I was disappointed with my camera on the last trip and got a bug in me when I returned to get something new. I used to use film SLR's but got out of that habit in the last ten years. I wanted something closer to that experience than my Olympus Stylus 410 gave me. Had a Nikon D40 been available at the time I might have bought it but I choked on the money and settled for a Canon S3IS.

The S3 is a really sweet camera. It has a phenomal zoom lens and image stabilizaiton that enables you to use it. It takes great 640x480 movies with sound. It has many other features that other compact digital camera's have too, but none of those have that zoom and the movies.

But. It's not a digital SLR. And as much as I've enjoyed using the S3 I kept coming back to what it wasn't. So 2 weeks ago I started shopping for a dSLR and astonished even myself by what I chose. A Nikon D200 w/ an 18-200mm zoom. Here's what it looks like with that lens. I added an SB-400 flash and I still need to get a bag to carry it. I must be losing my mind.

So there you have it. I'll be visiting Hyderabad during the hot season with scant excuse for not taking some good pictures. Except for those I'll come up with between now and then.

Housekeeping note: I changed the appearance of the blog, not because I like this format so much as because I was tired of the old one. And I created two categories on the right side of the page, one that collects the posts for the first India trip and another for the next.

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