Wed February 8 and Thurs February 9 – Hyderabad to Mumbai, Mumbai to the US

There was much excitement this morning over breakfast.  Lakuma brought her husband Giridhar and son Mittu to meet us, all the way from Chennai.  She was wearing a beautiful red and gold sari.  We sat on the terrace for quite a while chatting and getting to know one another.  Mittu, only 12, is understandably shy.  I don’t think any 12 year old enjoys meeting new adults but the ice was immediately broken when Cliff unzipped his “murse” (man purse) and pulled out an iPad.  Cliff gave Lakuma the iPad as a gift as has been coaching her for the past few days on how to use it.  The strangest thing is that Mittu immediately seemed to know how to use it without any instruction.  He’s particularly interested in learning to play the guitar so Cliff focused right in on the Garage Band app.  Mittu had the program changing instruments from keyboards to drums to guitar in minutes.

After breakfast we took a tour of our hotel, the Taj Falaknuma Palace.  Given its current glory, we were all curious to know the property’s history.  Turns out the Falaknuma is named for the hill upon which it sits.  It was built by the Nizam, the hereditary ruler of Hyderabad, as a palace to house guests only.  He had his own (bigger, better) palace is in the city which we will visit it later today.  The property had fallen into terrible disrepair and the Taj chain purchased it 10 or so years ago and restored it to glory.  We toured the magnificent public rooms including a dining room set for 100 guests, plus the Nizam!

Falaknuma Palace

Falaknuma Palace

After the tour Ferris and I checked out of the hotel (sigh).  Our next evening will be in Mumbai for a brief layover before our flight to Frankfurt and then on to the US.  But best not to think of all that now.  Cliff and Cathy will stay on in Hyderabad for another night before heading to Mumbai for a few days and then home.

We drove into town (yes, 45 minutes) to tour the Nizam’s own home, the Chowmahalla Palace.  While extremely grand and lovely, I think I prefer the siting of his lowly guest house, the Falaknuma Palace.

Chowmahalla Palace

Throne Room

You are Commanded by His Highness the Nizam

Afterward we took tuk tuks through snarling traffic and noxious fumes deep into the heart of old town to see the Charminar (four minarets).  Cliff, Giridhar and Mittu climbed to the top while the rest of us waited below, enjoyed the crowds and watched samosa-sellers carrying enormous, heaping platters on their heads outside the entry gate.  Oh to have one right now!  But I held back.

Charminar

I think Lakuma wanted Ferris and me to enjoy a little last minute shopping so she insisted (honestly I did not) that we go to one more shop before heading to the airport.  Getting anywhere is an ordeal, not just because of the traffic, but because no one really seems to know where anything is.  Even when locations and addresses have been procured, when you actually arrive there – after 45 agonizing minutes – the place just isn’t there.  So this happened to us today.  Lakuma had a shop in mind that she wanted to take us to but apparently they’d changed locations.  We waited in a strange alley until someone on a motorcycle came to lead us to the new location, which, without a guide, we would never ever have been able to find.  The shop was on the second floor buried deep in a shopping arcade.  I’m not convinced that without a motorcycle guide we’d have been able to find it. 

By the time we’d finished looking – and never finding that illusive gold necklace – it was time to head to the airport.  I did snag a couple of strands of tiny emerald beads, which supposedly come from Ceylon, thanks to Cliff and his pencil sharpener. 

Fortunately our drive to the airport was speedy on the strange highway to nowhere and we were able to wave goodbye to the Fish Building one last time.  Our flight left for Mumbai at 4pm and was uneventful.  However once we landed in Mumbai it was not the easiest thing to get from the domestic airport to our layover hotel.  We had a very nice car and driver from the hotel pick us up.  But traffic was snarled and it took us 15 minutes just to get out of the airport parking lot.  The traffic in suburban Mumbai was not much better so he took us on a detour in hopes of getting to the hotel faster. 

By this time it was dark and a beautiful full moon glowed over us.  We drove through backstreets that were straight out of a movie.  I don’t know when I’ve witnessed a scene that lasted about 30 minutes that was more surreal.  Here we were in a nice car, a kind of bubble, driving on a one-lane road through a primitive part of town.  It was cold outside and to Indians the weather is positively arctic.  People were huddled over makeshift fires wrapped in blankets.  We could see into each tiny one-room building that lined the street.  Some were shops.  Some were food vendors.  Some were just one room houses.  People sat on the ground eating and talking.  The street was busy with people walking and he had to pause many times to let people and other vehicles pass.  It seemed to be a typical evening, full of activity and the struggle for survival.  I’m not sure what made it seem so surreal.  Perhaps it was how narrow the street was.  How close this tiny strange world was to us, shielded in our bubble.  I kept thinking about the full moon and how it had hung in the sky as we drank on the patio at the Taj Falaknuma Palace last night and now how it hung over this scene in a slum on the outskirts of Mumbai.

45 minutes seems to be the number for this trip.  After 45 minutes of driving from the airport we finally reached our seedy, no-tell-motel, the Koh-i-noor.  I guess that’s what you can expect from a hotel that rents a room you’re only going to stay in for a few hours.  

Ferris and I did some last minute luggage organizing before taking a shower and trying to take a brief nap before heading out again.  By the time we got to the Koh-i-noor we only had 3 ½ hours before we had to leave.  The topper is that when I went to shower I found that only a weak hand-held bath was possible.  Why don’t I check these things before unpacking? 

Left at 12:30 am (now 2/9) for the international airport for our 3 am Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt.  We arrived in Frankfurt at about 6:30 am their time, had something to eat at our now-frequent haunt the Goethe Café, and hung out in the Lufthansa lounge. The last leg of our journey was a Lufthansa flight at 1:30 pm to Newark.  There is a terrible cold wave hanging over Europe at the moment and we could see that everyone in the airport was bundled up.  Even our flight had to be de-iced before takeoff.  We were fortunate enough to be able to use frequent flyer points for our flights so all were lovely and in Business Class.  Ahhhh.  Landed safely around 4:30 pm New York time and despite all the spices in my duffle bag, I had no visit at the baggage carousel by the agriculture beagle.

By the time I rode into Manhattan from New Jersey it was dark and the same beautiful full moon shone bright in the evening sky.  Is it possible that just a few hours ago this same moon looked over Hyderabad and Mumbai, and me?

Tuesday February 7 - Hyderabad

LA strikes me as being a city where no matter where you’re going it takes 45 minutes to get there.  In Hyderabad it’s more like 1 hour.  I don’t know how any business gets done in this city because you can’t go anywhere in a reasonable amount of time.  Someone told me that the silicon valley part of Hyderabad is located in an entirely new suburb far away from this congested mess.  That’s the only reasonable explanation for how such an important center could thrive here – separate itself from the madness.

Today was all about waiting in traffic and being led around by more “lead cars”.  I learned that one benefit of wearing a sari, or burkha for that matter, is that you have plenty of fabric to hold over your nose and mouth to screen out exhaust as you sit in idling traffic.  To think that for a good number of the vehicles on the road there is a corresponding lead vehicle.  What a crazy and non-functional system.

In the morning we visited the Golkonda Fort, a very important site built by Quli Qutb Shah in the 1500s.  At the time Hyderabad was a famous and prosperous center for all sorts of trade including pearls and precious stones such as diamonds.  It is said that the Koh-i-noor diamond, now in the crown of the Queen of England, was looted from this fort by a conquering army in 1656.  Cliff and I climbed many stairs to the top of the fort and investigated the ruin of a mosque and two interesting Hindu temples made by carving cave-like spaces into massive boulders. 

Next to the Qutb Shahi tombs where numerous Mughal rulers are buried.  The Qutb Shahis were of Turkoman origin and you can certainly see this influence in the architecture.  These tombs in particular reminded me very much of monuments seen in Central Asia.

Lakuma then took us for a special treat; lunch at a popular local place called “Chutney”.  We ate a feast of 10 or so different dishes, all of which were new to me and I think to others too.  We ate off banana leaves with our fingers of course.  There were many types of bread:  dhosa stuffed with mushroom and another with potatoes, Indian pizza, naan…  Delicious veg dishes with cauliflower and chickpeas.  Everything was wonderful.  We learned that Indians eat their food very rapidly and I found myself eating so fast that I hardly had time to savor the taste of what I was eating.  I prefer the slower method but I understand the tradition of not wanting your food to get cold.

This lunch didn’t take place until 4pm so when time came for dinner we decided to skip it tonight.  Cliff and Lakuma went off to work on the iPad.  Cathy, Ferris and I went to the lovely terrace overlooking the city and enjoyed a special performance of Qawwali music.  It was my first exposure to this gorgeous and rhythmic sound.  Qawwali is a particular style of Sufi music from the Indian subcontinent.  The lyrics of the songs they sing give thanks to god.  Five men dressed in white knelt on a rug singing, playing instruments and clapping hands.  The songs seemed to go faster and faster until finally building to a thrilling crescendo.  Chills go up my spine when I think about how beautiful this music was.  I am going to order music by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan right away!

Copied from Nat Geo Music:

Qawwali music is a Sufi tradition that is completely unique to the Indian subcontinent. But with its heartbeatlike pulse, vocal fireworks and message of universal love and peace, this style has found devoted fans all across the globe—and not just among those who profess Sufi or even more broadly Muslim beliefs.

While qawwali is thought to have its roots with the legendary composer and poet Amir Khusrau (1253–1325), it seems clear that the music also has links to the Hindu tradition of bhajan devotional singing. Even so, qawwali is the vehicle through which the Sufi tradition of mehfil-e-sama, or "assembly for listening," is expressed, where believers create a link to religious ecstasy and to God for the performer and listener alike.

The men—and it is always men—who perform qawwali can do so in a group of any size, though there is always a lead singer, one or two secondary vocalists who also play the harmonium instrument, at least one percussionist and a chorus of singers who also clap rhythmically. The tradition is passed down within families, and qawwali lyrics are often sung in Farsi (Persian), Braj Bhasha (a medieval dialect of Hindi), Punjabi or Urdu. Many of the songs are attributed to Khusrau or to other Sufi composer-poets like Baba Bulleh Shah, and the poems the qawwals sing very often resonate on two levels: many of the poems describe longing and love that superficially resemble love between two humans but that Sufis understand to be the yearning a seeker has for the divine.

The artist who did more than any other to bring qawwali to a global audience was the great Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who died in 1997; other performers' recordings to seek out include those of the Sabri Brothers and the duo Mehr and Sher Ali.
—Anastasia Tsioulcas

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.