Sightseeing in Hyderabad

We spent our first full day in Hyderabad sightseeing. Golconda Fort occupies the highest land in the Hyderabad area and was therefore the seat of power for several hundred years. We've become discriminating connoisseurs of fine forts over the past week, having seen the Red Fort in Delhi and the Red Fort in Agra (the Mughals were not good with names). Golconda is much larger and more intimidating than the other, so on the advice of our driver we hired a guide at the gate. His name was Javet, and he told us that god willing ("inshallah") he would take us up the 750 steps to the top, and inshallah, we would return down the other side. He recited the facts about Golconda like verses of a prayer, closing his eyes and bobbing his head as he spoke and counting on his dark, well-manicured fingers seven of this and seven of that (walls, pipes, kilometers--everything was measured in sevens). Besides the info he provided, Javet was helpful in one other important way: he posed us for pictures.

Before entering the harem complex, we noticed a pile of rocks, covered in saffron-colored paint, under a tree. Javet informed us with a casual hand flip that it was a snake hole. "He is a cobra, come out at 7:30 every night." And the orange paint? Another hand flip. "Is the Hindus..."

Midway through the harem tour, Javet asked for my camera. "You have big flash? Good. You stay here." He walked confidently into a dark tunnel, from which came a strange hissing sound. I assumed it was water. I was wrong.

Yes, those yellow spots are the eyes of bats. "Twenty, twenty-five thousand," according to Javet. Strange that where once the king lodged his 360 wives (one for each day of the year, plus five days vacation), you now find a harem of bats. I'm not sure what that means, metaphorically. I just think it's strange.

These guys were on their way up the 750 steps to the ice cream concession at the summit. Indians complain a lot about how cold it is in winter (a chilly 75 Fahrenheit today) between licks of ice cream.

After Golconda, we drove a few km down the road, through a particularly seedy neighborhood, to the Qutub Shahi Tombs. I was surprised by how cool this place was: a sprawling, parklike burial ground for the members of the dynasty who ruled Hyderabad in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The government of Andhra Pradesh charges a few rupees for admission, but I suspect the fee is waived for locals. Families picnicked among the five-story-high, four-hundred-year-old marble mausoleums, waving hello and sending their children to ask "please what is your country?" (The answer to this question, by the way, is not "the United States" or "America" but "USA," pronounced with an accent so that it sounds like this: "you ess ee" Before we got here, I had heard that Indians tend to understand you better if you speak English with an Indian accent. I always thought that was an arrogant idea, but it seems true that people here appreciate it if you meet them halfway, accent-wise)

We lived in Williamsburg, Virginia, for two years while Jessica was in graduate school and were serenaded ad nauseum about the importance of historical preservation. The idea of a historical theme park, or a "living history museum" like Colonial Williamsburg, would be unfathomable in India, mostly because there are just too many historically relevant sites. Everywhere you look you see history--the spires of a three-hundred-year old Hindu temple behind the parking lot of a call center. Or this place. To my eye there is more architectural history in one of these tombs than in Jamestown and Williamsburg combined. And the picnicking is excellent as well.

Violet's second post

Querido clase,

En Navidad yo solo recibi dos regalos -- en Navidad, no para Navidad! India es muy diferente. Ahora estoy en Hyderabad y es diferente que Delhi. Yo fui a muchas lugares y muchas personas no! muchisimas personas se ponen y llevan saris y salwar kameez. De la comida: a mi me gusta mas las sopas amarillas. En India tomo muchisimo te. Yo estoy quedando en un apartamento. En el apartamento hay un jardin. La escuela que voy a ir a se llama Chirec.

Violet.

Last Days in Delhi

Back in Delhi now. We have been in India almost a week but still find ourselves waking up before dawn. Monday morning we took a freezing tuk-tuk (autorickshaw) ride to Lodi Garden, a magnificent public park which marked the south boundary of British New Delhi. When it was laid out, the park was called "Lady Willington Park." We think "Lodi Garden" is a more appropriate name. Check out the pictures of the Mughal-style tombs on the site; nothing about this says "Lady Willington," right?

Lodi Garden is one of the few places we've seen people exercising in public. There were half a dozen joggers the morning we visited. Jessica was jealous, but only to a point. That point being the pack of wild dogs, who followed us like curious children . I tried to explain to Jess that the dogs were spirits trying to attach themselves to her, and that they would not go away until she made peace with their suffering, but for some reason that didn't make her feel any better.

Later in the day we went to Hauz Khas, a bohemian enclave not far from our guesthouse. After some shopping, we stopped into Coffee Day, a chain of Indian coffee houses with hip decor and loud techno music. Their slogan is "Anything can happen over coffee." I suppose that's true, but on the day we visited their coffee machine was broken. No hot water. We hung out anyway, because anything can happen over cold Nescafe, too.

On our last night in the Delhi guesthouse, the owner called on Jessica's professional expertise, explaining that he had a problem with one of the web services offered by her company. Apparently the listing for his inn had been confused with the listing for a similar inn a few doors down. No problem, Jessica told him, this happens a lot. She whipped out her laptop, dashed off a few emails and in ten minutes had the answer. (Her colleagues were just getting to the office in California.) Jess explained what he needed to do. The innkeeper thanked her, wrote it all down, and promptly passed the orders to his teenage son, who accepted the challenge with typical teenage reluctance. A photo of the whole family is below.

Next post: Hyderabad!

Delhi Days and Christmas in Agra

Our first morning in Delhi, we left our guest house in search of a cab. It is like National Geographic, but pan out - all kinds of people everywhere, mangy dogs - the smell of campfire, curry, body odor, and excretion. We got to the main road and quickly turned around. It's a humbling experience to be so different and so identifiable by your skin and gender. We called a cab from the comfort of the guest house and proceeded to a number of sights starting with the Fulbright office, Hamayun's tomb, Lotus temple, and Khan market. Our driver would kindly drop us off and arrange a time to meet us afterwards.

It's nearly impossible to integrate when you are clutching your belongings (most especially your child - teenage boys are keen to have their picture taken with her, but we'll only let them do it if one of us is in the photo), trying not to make eye contact, saying "no" to beggars and vendors who are most persuasive.

We've been taking our breakfast and dinners in the guest house. They are served by 3 house boys who are between the ages of 14-18. They rarely smile and almost never speak directly with us. They make the most light and delicious omelette I've ever tasted with coriander leaves and tomato. When we are eating, the boys crouch in the kitchen and drink tea or smoke bidis. Violet is aghast that the innkeeper "does nothing" and they do all the work. We told her that she's a manager, but I don't think she's exonerated in Violet's eyes.

Our next day, I went to work in the Gurgaon office - I'm not working right now, but this was an opportunity to meet my boss and peer managers. My boss' name is Gayatri, which means sun salutation. She is true to her name - refreshing in her straightforward style. I sat in on several meetings and learned quite a bit on my first day about the logistics of running a company across the globe. My driver in the morning was a Sikh that I fear may have TB. We've had him several times as our driver in Delhi. He coughs as he drives and sips cough syrup at stoplights.

Nick and Violet spent the day in Old Delhi - very exciting, but I'll let them recount it. We've spent the Christmas holiday in Agra - the site of the Taj Mahal. Nick insisted we take the train, and I may have never been more scared or uncomfortable as when we were waiting on the platform in Delhi. On the train, several children tried to jump on and stow away under our seats, but were caught. We were immediately put at ease by a young man named Ish who sat with us. He spoke beautiful English - so well that the other men in the car wouldn't speak English in our presence despite their obvious understanding. He worked in South Africa setting up 3G networks for Nokia and was beaming as he told us about his engagement. He bought us tea and made sure that we got off at the right train station.

If India is chaotic, then the train stations are pure havoc. We met a very persuasive, almost unsettlingly so, cab driver named Tahir who took us to our hotel and picked us up at 6:30 on Christmas morning to take us to the Taj. Tahir insisted he cared not for money but for honesty and trust. I've never felt so happy to be in the embraces of a western style hotel. We had beers in the bar, breakfast in the room, hot water to spare, and reliable Internet - all spotty at the guest house.

The Taj Mahal is daunting to get to because there are so many foreign tourists and activity all around. We saw camels, dogs copulating, bulls in the roundabout, monkeys on the walls. Once you walk through the gate, it's the most remarkable site of beauty and harmony you will ever see. Outside and inside the Taj are beautiful gem inlaid flower designs. After the Taj, we went to another site, the Red Fort, which was also spectacular. It's a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was a king's palace, very well preserved. The white marble harem was truly a marvel with similar inlaid work, and beautiful views. You could walk around all of it and imagine that you were there. Finally, Tahir took us to a nice restaurant for lunch and we agreed to go to a rug store where we dropped a lot of dough. (Tahir was delighted, because he no doubt got a kickback). The rugs are hand knotted in the villages around Agra. They are made of Kashmir wools with beautiful, Indian inspired designs. Shipping is subsidized by the Indian government, because it is a dying art form. Our salesman was a class act. I pray we receive the rugs and this was not the biggest Christmas day scam ever. Tahir wanted to spend the evening with us, but we had to forcefully decline. Although we had a nice day, Tahir kept us waiting in the havoc of Agra quite a bit which made the experience harrowing.

Today, we return to Delhi for a couple of days. I'm insisting we skip the train and hire a car...

Violet's first dispatch (en espanol)

Querido clase, a mi me gusta India mucho. Yo tengo un mes fuera de la escuela! Para Navidad voy a Taj Mahal!!!!! Yo compre ropa muy muy muy muy muy bonita. Estoy durmiendo en la misma cama que mis padres. Solo puedo tomar agua en botellas! Y no puedo carne ni cosas que no han cocinados! India es extraño. Estoy aprendiendo que las culturas son muy diferentes. En unas lugares tengo que quitar mis zapatos y en un lugar yo tenia que quitarme los zapatos y ponerme una bufanda sobre mi cabeza. Yo te extraño mucho. Unos baños no tienen jabón o otras no tienen papel higiénico! Muchas personas me dicen cosas en ingles como: Como te llamas? Y me toman fotos. Y me tocan. Cada semana te voy a dar un email. Hay tuk-tuks, taxis, y bicicletas. A mi me encanta la comida. Otra vez te extraño mucho.

Para siempre,

Violet

First Days in Delhi

We arrived in Delhi at 3:30am local time, Wednesday December 22. To us it felt like 2pm the day before, but going to the other side of the Earth in less than 24 hours, we discovered, is just not going to feel normal no matter how you try to explain it to yourself. We left San Francisco at 1:30pm on December 20. The 21st we spent at 34000 feet, except for a brief middle-of-the-night stop at Shanghai airport. We hadn't expected to fly west, but an early morning call from Continental Airlines, as we were preparing to leave for the airport, had re-routed us over the Pacific.

You can't judge a country by an airport at midnight, but I learned one thing: Chinese security screeners are more assiduous than their American counterparts. Clearing security after a brief and efficient trip through immigration, the Chinese TSA dude insisted that I had a lighter in my backpack. This was the same bag, with no additions or subtractions, that had passed muster at SFO. I assured the guy that I had no lighter. "Maybe it's my USB key," I suggested. The guard looked me square in the eyes. "No," he said emphatically, "it is a lighter." (ie, I know what I saw, jackass.) So I dug around in the backpack, under the watchful eye of his colleague, and pulled out...(see where this is going?)...a lighter!

Soon we will all be Chinese.

In Delhi we were driven to our guesthouse by a friendly young man from Uttarkhand, a state in the north of the country. He had never been to this particular subdivision, he informed me as we left the airport. He called me sir and spoke in a high, squeaky whisper. When we reached the "enclave" (as residential neighborhoods are called here), we did a lap around the main road but failed to locate the house number. The driver pulled over and asked directions from a couple of men--were they homeless?--preparing tea over an open fire. Bear in mind it was 4:30am. Turns out these guys were the gatekeepers for the enclave block we wanted. They swung open the gate and gave our driver directions in Hindi. We found the number--B4/125--but the house was completely dark. The driver rattled the gate and hollered something. Almost immediately, a man appeared from inside the carport.

Let me stop and emphasize something. This was the middle of a cold December night--you could see your breath, which is a real rarity in Delhi--and there was a man to answer a rattle, any old rattle, at his carport gate. Plus, this was not even the house we wanted--while the driver negotiated with the carport guy, I checked the address in my cellphone and saw that I had a different house number. I had B4/124, one house down. So the man disappeared back into the shadows, we drove a few yards down the block, and before we were out of the van another guard (or genius locii) stepped out of a tiny wooden box the size of an upright coffin. This one wore a ski mask. We asked if this was the guesthouse, and he confirmed it was. He moved slowly, like a frozen reptile, to unlock the gate, and then the front door, and then for a minute nobody moved or spoke--not the driver, not the guard, not me. There are a lot of moments like this in India, where something needs to be negotiated but no one will step forward to begin the proceedings. I think it has to do with a set of social rules which are obscure to me at this point. At any rate, I finally asked if I should go upstairs or down from the foyer. The guard exhaled, a plume of steam rising from his ski mask. "The boys will come," he said. And a minute later, they did: three bleary-eyed teenagers dispatched by the landlady.

My advice for the luckless, the confused, the disoriented, in India? Just wait. Someone will come along. He might even be the man you need.

Leaving California

This is our home in California. A family from our daughter's school is moving in next week. They are renovating their house and need a place to stay for a few months. Perfect, huh?

Normally this view would include a couple of cats: Mina the vampire pocket panther and Tiger the laptop purr machine. Another family generously volunteered to take both while we are in India.