Currently Fee and I are chilling at a internet cafe in Hyderabad trying to burn the 5 hours until our night train to Mumbai that I'm not super enthused about. Night trains are totally the most efficient use of time but they're sort of tiring and dirty. Realistically I know when I look back at this trip I'm really not going to remember the night trains so it's not a big deal I suppose.
Hyderabad is pretty cool. It's the capital of Andra Pradesh and used to be a big Muslim city and it's got a bunch of really cool mosques and stuff which is what we did day one here. First we went to the Charminar (sounds like charmander!!!! fire spin!!!) which is this big like square thing in the middle of this big road that looks like a Muslim Arc de Triumphe. It's pretty rad, but the stairs going up to the top aren't lit and are super narrow and inconsistently spaced. Near there is a mosque whose gates are made using clay from Mecca. Since Felix had a bag he had to wait outside while I walked around inside. It was cool looking but the ground is covered in pigeon shit and you aren't allowed to wear shoes. In India at major sites random dudes are around and they act as tour guides/really annoying dudes who follow you around saying things in unintelligble english then ask for money. It sort of sucks. When I got out Felix said he the dude he was chatting with got punched in the face by his friend and it was mad awkward so we both left.
Near there is a bazaar where it'll be a block of solid bangle shops, then a block of sari shops, then a block of metal stuff, then a block of rugs. It's insane, it's like free market economics don't work here because there's literally 30 of each store selling the exact same shit and they're all next door to each other. It literally makes no sense. In the bazaar we also saw a giant goat with floppy bunny ears. It was super weird. We also went to this palace type place called chowmallah and saw a bunch of old stuff. All pretty w/e. On the way to the restaurant we were going to have dinner at people kept coming up to us to try to sell us bangles. Why the fuck would we want tons of plastic bangles?! It defies reason. Luckily the place we had dinner (the next day too) Hotal Shadab, has the BEST BIRIYANI EVER. Biriyani is basically rice and meat i think baked together. It came with amazing yogurt and curry sauce on the side. It was def life-changing.
Chowmallah:
Our Sweet Chowmallah Photos:
insane looking goat:
BEST BIRIYANI EVER:
Our street has "bars" that we figured we'd hit up that night. We pre-gamed on some Tullamore Dew Whiskey that I brought Fee from the states and went out. The bars were really weird and un-chill. Some dude flicked his cigarette, probably intentionally, at me. We took the hint and went back to the room to drink more. The next morning sucked. Being hungover in India is the absolute worst. It's like the hottest and noisiest place in the world. True misery was experienced.
Day 2 we went sort of out of town to this place called Fort Golconda which is this enormous castle. It's straight up Helms Deep/The Two Towers status. Epic is a pretty played out word right now but it's super epic. Pics will be up prob at the end of the month, maybe sooner but iunno. Anyways it took about 2-3 hours to traverse the whole castle as we were periodically stopped for families to take their pictures with us. I think since it isn't tourist season and most foreign tourists only go to Dehli, Kolkata, Agra, and Mumbai we're quite the rarity. It's been a week and I've only seen 4 foreigners. After wards we checked out these crazy tombs nearby that all look like the palace in Aladdin but like miniature. And by miniature I still mean at least 4 stories tall. Then it was back to the biriyani place for round two and finally we went to this place in the travel book for some hookah.
Fort Golconda:
The place is called Mocha and it honestly feels like something that would exist in LA, it's probably the closest Hyderabad has to Habibi's in Westwood. It's overpriced (still cheap by US standards) and trendier than the sort of shit me and felix normally do. They have wraps, paninis, crustinis, poutine, and a huge selection of coffee and desserts. It's clearly where the Hyderabad young rich go. We got one of their premium hookahs, a chickin panini, fries with curry, coffee, and a pink lemonade and it came out to about $16 US. To put that in perspective, today our lunch at what must have been one of the fancier places in Hyderabad was about $8. What made Mocha redic was the soundtrack It was this huge mix of everything that was popular from 2002-2004. Each song wasn't played for more than 10 seconds either. Here's the list:
- nookie
- where is the love
- seed 2.0
- in da club
- this love
- sunday morning
- yeah
- bootylicious
- milkshake
- next episode
- stan
- we belong together
- my boo
- you don't know my name
- it wasn't me
- 19-2000
- gasolina
- what's love got to do with it
- holla back girl
- 1 2 step
- work it
- the reason
- clocks
- tempted to touch
- what's my name
- my perogative
- how you remind me
Today we checked out some random giant buddah statue in the river, think statue of liberty but with buddah and not nearly as big. Apparently when they were towing it out to the river it sank and took two years to recover. I personally wish i saw that instead... At the lame-o kids park type thing it was at there was a whole class of MBA students, 9 of which wanted their picture taken with us. We feel like celebrities! sort of...
Giant Buddha:
Anywayssss Mumbai tomorrow!
actually the 30 shops next to each other selling the same stuff is an example of some economic principle. it's kinda the same reasoning behind why you see so many car dealers next to each other, or gas stations next to each other, etc.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/12/planet_money_your_friend_or_fo.html
on another note i def. saw the whole people acting as tour guides and then asking for money on the great wall of china.
that soundtrack is ridiculous hahahaha, reminds me how the music i heard everywhere in shanghai was early 2000s r&b.