Hyderabad

or: The city of pearls (oh yes!)

Hyderabad has a special place in my heart (of course because of wonderful friends like U., M., A. and now K., but mostly because it is your city), so I was pretty excited to come back here again, although I could have stayed in Mumbai some more to enjoy our budding love story. 

We reached the city on the afternoon before Holi, settled into the hotel, admired our room from all sides ('Wow, a huge window!', 'A view all over the city!', 'Have you seen that bathroom?!') and decided to hail an auto downtown. After Mumbai with actually working meters, having to fight for a fair fare (;-)) was a bit of a challenge but you have to admire the excuses auto drivers found for not switching it on. From 'The meter is not working' to 'It will be 50 extra with the meter', we got the full range, meeting each one with an increasingly annoyed eye-roll. After having negotiated a more or less acceptable price for my chosen destination, Charminar, we board the auto downtown. 'What's Charminar?', M. asks me and I give her the same reply as to her repeated question 'Are we there yet?': 'You'll know :-)'. 
Charminar at dusk (ok, dusk doesn't take very long to turn into darkness in a tropical country), lit from underneath by a thousand lights is just beautiful, I could stand there staring up at it forever. And when I'm done staring up, I would start looking around, at the life, the people, the stalls exhibiting everything that is colourful or glittering. Oh btw, this is where we acquired our new name 'Kss kss madam', the beckoning call of Hyderabadi salesmen. Speaking of 'kss kss': In the hotel where we stayed (name and contact details available on request), the staff would read our every wish from our eyes. One evening, we were sitting in the restaurant, 'our' waiter standing about 7 metres away, busy with whatever work. I don't even remember what it was but I had a request and so I tentatively 'kss-kss'-ed in his general direction. Immediately, he lifted his head, looked at me and stormed over to our table, grinning. I laughed, slightly embarrassed but also pleased.
What else happened on that day? I met A. for the first time in real life after having known each other online for almost six years. We recognised each other immediately but what I couldn't refrain from saying - after noticing that we were about the same height - was that I thought he was a bit taller. 'And I thought you were a bit shorter', so his grinning response. All in all, it was a fun evening, apart from the fact that his car had decided to breathe fire, ok, smoke, which is bad enough.

The next day was the long awaited Holi that we had been dreaming about for years, enacted in the park here once and now practically planned this trip around. I've prematurely described the events of that day here, so I won't repeat it now. 

For Thursday, we had big plans. Since Hyderabad is the city of pearls, we decided that we needed to do some pearl shopping. 'The best person to go pearl and gold shopping with is my mum.' We took Mu.'s suggestion to heart and picked up Sh. the next morning. She was as friendly-reserved as I remembered her from last year but seemed genuinely pleased to see me again. Sh. told the driver (I just notice how decadent that sounds, taking a driver here and a driver there but in India, it's an affordable luxury for us) where to go on the hunt for M.'s golden nose ring and a general selection of pearly stuff. A few hours, an assortment of jewellery and a pair of new shoes each (M. had busted the strap of hers, stepping out of the car, and seeing the choice in the second shop, I couldn't resist buying a pair of green rhinestoney ones to match the salwar kameez I was wearing) later, we dropped Sh. back home, thanked her profusely for her expertise and patience and headed for our next destination: Shilparamam. Doesn't the name alone sound mysterious and inviting? It's a big area with a hundred arts and craft booths, eating places, open air theatres, statues and just spots to hang out and have a good time. We looked, smiled, negotiated and shopped quite a bit before giving in to the calls of the mehendi ladies near the entrance/exit of the park. 
What follows will be known in history as the great peacock competition: I don't even remember how it started but in the end, M.'s artist and mine, Anitha (again, contact details available - I asked for her card), tried to outplay each other in the number, size and beauty of peacocks they applied onto our hands, arms and feet so that we got more than our money's worth in henna designs.
The evening was spent having dinner with Mu. at Taj Krishna, a hotel M. had also considered for our stay in Hyderabad. But while it is beautiful and the waiters super nice and attentive as well, I'm glad that we picked the other one in the end: the staff at ours was much better looking ;-).

A. wanted to show me around a bit, starting with an excursion to Osmansagar, a lake and reservoir outside the city, an adjacent park and later a visit to the locally famous Golkonda Fort. He was even ready to let me drive his car on the road outside Hyderabad when - of course! - there was smoke coming out of the motor compartment again. So all his time spent in the garage the previous day had not amounted to much and our trip ended with us going back, me being dropped to the hotel, him visiting his mechanic once more.
So after catching up on some sleep and M.'s return from Birla Mandir, a beautiful white marble temple that looks out on the city, we payed a last visit to the Charminar area, looked at everything with eyes and hands, I bought and munched on a small bag of popcorn (nearly perishing from a coughing fit about halfway through before being narrowly saved by a shop assistant who offered me a glass of water) as well as avoiding (me) or giving in to the last 'kss kss'es (M.) and finally returning 'home' to get spoilt at dinner one more time.

And once more, it was time to pack our bags. How I hate packing! I seriously considered calling the reception or simply offering some money to one of the bellboys to do this unpopular job for me. Long story short, I pulled myself together and did the packing on my own. Just before leaving, we had another look at the pearl shop in the lobby, a look that turned into another small shopping spree. Well, you can never have too many gifts..

That was that for Hyderabad and our next and last big stop on this journey, Bangalore, was only one flight away.