Monday February 6 – Bijapur to Hyderabad

Had breakfast in the grimy, dirty hotel restaurant – took us quite a while to find something we felt comfortable eating – and left town as quickly as possible.  While we’d had large rooms with separate living rooms and large bedrooms, the cleanliness level of the Hotel Pearl left much to be desired.  At one point last night I heard Ferris let out a scream.  I rushed over to find several rather large dead bugs on the wooden platform of the bed on her side of the mattress.  The way I look at it, given other cleanliness issues in the room, I was just happy the bugs weren’t alive.

The drive from Bijapur to Hyderabad is an all day affair (8 hours) despite how it looks on the map.  Often a drive looks like a pretty straight and easy shot from one place to another on the map but the reality of the situation is always different.  Indian roads, even the “major highways”, are two-lane and filled with a slow-moving but charming assortment of vehicles of Indian daily life such as the bullock cart and overstuffed auto-rickshaws, small trucks and buses that attempt to fill a critical need for mass transportation where the official system falls far short. 

Had an interesting lunch at the Raaz Panjabi Dhaba family restaurant somewhere on the road.  It was the usual hot day and men were making naan over even hotter pit ovens.  We had an assortment of delicious dishes plus my new favorite Indian soda (a great alternative when Coke isn’t available) Thumbs Up!  

Lunch stop.

The loo.

Finally we were in striking distance of Hyderabad, a city of 8.5 million.  We got on an elevated multi-lane highway on which we were virtually the only vehicle.  I kept waiting for the thing to suddenly end I was so convinced it must be a road still under construction.  Eventually we met up with a handful of other cars and drove on for what seemed like hours more.  At some point we began pulling over to ask anyone we could find how to get to our hotel, the Taj Falaknuma.  I suddenly realized that at no point during the trip have I ever seen our driver(s) consult a map.  It seemed as if a map might come in handy right now, in such a big city, but far be it for me to question the wisdom of Ramesh or Bala who always knew where to go as if by sheer intuition.  However intuition seemed in need of help and we continued to pull over.  At last we encountered a man on a motorcycle who offered to take us to the hotel.  Later I learned that this is apparently a sort of human GPS system in frequent use in Hyderabad. 

Somewhere on the road to highway to nowhere we passed an office building shaped like a giant Pepperidge Farm Goldfish!  It has an open mouth that’s painted red which appears to be a deck of some sort.  There are offices even in the tail.

Motorcycle man.

The Taj Falaknuma Palace

Being showered with rose petals...

Thanks to motorcycle man we arrived at around 6pm at our hotel which is a restored palace formerly owned by the Nizam of Hyderabad.  The Taj Falaknuma is located on the top of a high hill on the outskirts of the city.  Much to my embarrassment a horse-drawn carriage came to pick us up at the entry gate and carried us up a long drive to the front door of the palace.  As we entered we were showered with rose petals from the roof.  Rooms are gorgeous and the service is even better.  We were in great need of a hose down after our past few days on the road.  We put on our finest and met for cocktails on the terrace overlooking the city, then had an elegant Indian dinner at the hotel.

Cocktails on the patio.