Hyderabad

I had to go to Hyderabad for work for two weeks in March. The kids stayed with Paul in Delhi but the three of them came to visit me on my first weekend there and we did some sightseeing. I didn’t know what to expect of Hyderabad but was pleasantly surprised. It is in South India and is the capital of Andhra Pradesh (an Indian state). It is substantially smaller than Delhi, which has about 22 million inhabitants. But it’s  not exactly small because it has 8.5 million inhabitants, which makes it India’s 4th most populous city. It also has about a million more people the whole country of Bulgaria (where I was born).  It’s all a matter of perspective, I guess.

The city has a rich and interesting history and was the seat of several very wealthy dynasties. I had read White Mughals by William Dalrymple and was really intrigued by Hyderabad. The book is about the British Raj in Hyderabad and the relationship of the Hyderabadi Nizams (Rulers) with the British. It’s a sad book but I found it quite interesting and couldn’t wait to explore the city.  But Hyderabad is not all about history and the past. As a matter of fact it is a large IT hub where many of the world’s largest IT and consulting companies have offices, hence its nickname Cyberabad. The employees of those companies are a large part of our visa applicant pool as they travel to the US quite often for client meetings, conferences, trainings, work (H1B visas) or tourism, so we see many of them each day.

Hyderabad is also famous for Char Minar, Golkonda, diamonds, pearls, lacquer bracelets and its biryanis (rice dishes). We saw most of those things, bought some bracelets and ate biryanis.

First, we went to the old city and saw Char Minar (four minarets) and Mecca Masjid. They are located in a bustling area with a lot of historic buildings and markets. As interesting as it was, however, we didn’t spend a lot of time there because both kids wanted to wander (chasing goats, pigeons and whatnot) and the area was very crowded – not ideal for a casual stroll with kids.

That was not enough time in the old town for me, so I went back there after Paul and the kids left for Delhi and did some more sight seeing and bracelet shopping. There is a whole street it the Char Minar area dedicated to bracelets and jewelry – it was pretty overwhelming. I am not much of a bracelet person but Hyderabadi bracelets are pretty awesome. They are said to be made of lacquer, though I am not quite sure what that is, and they have small colored pieces of glass embedded in the lacquer in really neat designs. Most Indian women buy them in sets that go almost all the way to the elbow, which is a bit over the top for me but you can buy individual bracelets too if you like, which is what I did. I bought a few for me and a few as gifts, which turned out to be entirely not enough because Max broke some of them. I clearly need to go back for more. Here are a couple of pictures of bracelet stores and a picture of some men eating a fruit/vegetable I’d never seen before on bracelet street.

 

But I digress - back to the story. After old town, we went to Golkonda, an expansive fort about 10 km outside Hyderabad, which had been the capital of an old kingdom (c.1518–1687). It had also been one of the first diamond mine and markets in the world and is the source of some of the most famous diamonds in the world, including the Hope Diamond (a deep blue diamond, currently in the Smithsonian in the US),  the Koh-i-Noor Diamond (Mountain of Light - currently in the Queen of England’s crown) and the Darya-i-Noor Diamond (Sea of Light - the largest pink diamond in the world, currently in Iran’s Treasury of National Jewels). The fort is quite large and mostly in ruins but you could see that it had been really impressive in its day.

Some of us may have been quite exhausted by this point and may have zonked off on a chair in a café.

From there, we headed for Falaknuma Palace, formerly one of the palaces of Nizams (the local rulers) but currently a luxury hotel. It was designed by an English architect in a blend of Italian and Tudor styles. It had a very European look and feel. In it is what is considered to be the world’s largest dining table with 101 seats as well as one of the largest collections of Venetian chandeliers, a unique Jade collection and a huge organ,  among many other interesting  and fancy things. 

Falaknuma was private property of the Nizam family until 2000, when it was bought by Taj Hotels. After 10 years of renovations and restoration, it “opened to the public” in 2010. It is not really open to the public because you can’t just waltz in there unless you have a reservation at the hotel or one of the restaurants, all of which are quite spendy. Several of my colleagues at the consulate in Hyderabad recommended going to Falaknuma, s0 it was high on my list but I was also told that you can’t get in unless you have a reservation. So I called and tried to make a reservation at the Indian restaurant on the property because I had heard that it was excellent, albeit pricey. The woman on the phone told me that children under 10 were not allowed in the restaurant. I wasn’t going to leave my children behind, so I said that I would have to cancel. The woman suggested we come for tea instead and so we did – we had High tea and Nizami tea at Falaknuma, which was plenty of food and drink but a lot less money than a full dinner and we got to enjoy the luxury of the palace, which was pretty neat.

During the trip to Hyderabad, I also got to meet in person and hang out with fellow blogger Stephanie from Where In The World Am I and her lovely family. I have been following her blog from the day we found out we were coming to India. She was the only Foreign Service person blogging from India at the time, so I spent a lot of time reading her posts and looking at pictures trying to imagine what our lives might look like. I mentioned to Stephanie that I wanted to try authentic Biryani and she took me to a small restaurant called Bahar, which was very simple and unpretentious but their Biryanis were delish. We had vegetable and chicken Biryanis and they were both yum – Thanks, Stephanie!

I will leave you with a picture of the throne room at Chowmahalla, a palace complex located in the old city, which is where the Nizams and their families used to live.

Happy Easter

We celebrated Easter on two separate days, hence the different hairstyles Max is sporting. The first picture is from the Embassy Easter Party and the rest are from our own egg hunt and egg fight.

So if you celebrate it, Happy Easter to you and yours!!!

Mumbai Part II

More pictures from Mumbai – come join us on a small tour.

At the Gateway of India (not to be confused with India Gate, which is in Delhi)

Boats at The Gateway of India

The Taj Palace Hotel - we did not stay there – it’s very fancy and expensive!

Ornately inlaid flooring at the lobby of the Taj Palace Hotel

Downtown South Mumbai – the car in the foreground is an Ambassador, still widely used as a cab, government and private vehicle.

A beautifully decorated Parsee (Zoroastrian) residential building

A young tightrope walker – she was tiny, maybe 4 years old and was already earning a living by entertaining crowds in South Mumbai, while her mom accompanied her on the drum. We didn’t finish our lunch, so we shared some chicken biryani with them, which they welcomed.

The Antilia (this is actually just part of it – couldn’t get the whole building), allegedly the most expensive home in the world. It belongs to Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries, one of the largest Indian companies. It is 27 stories high and is maintained by a full-time staff of 600 people.

Drying fish and shrimp on the beach at Juhu – the smell was overpowering.

A couple of beautiful churches in Bandra, a suburb of Mumbai

If I were to live in Mumbai, I’d live in this building in Bandra, which is next door to Shah Rukh Khan’s house…

… and this would be my view.

Beautiful, no – I love that rocky beach. There is a Bollywood walk of fame there, where the biggest Bollywood stars have left their hand prints.

Next on our list was a visit to a sound studio where we saw how sound is mixed and sound effects, voices and music added to movies and commercials. We also got to play voice talents and had a chance to record our voices over some real stars’ in a TV commercial.

Max didn’t care about the whole voice recording business but he loves fish and the aquarium in the studio scored major points with him. 

Our last stop was S.J. Studios, a Bollywood studio where we saw several sets – an office, a jail, a police commissioner’s office and a hospital.

We got to watch the filming of a soap opera episode in the hospital and then saw one of the stars outside, who was gracious enough to take a picture with us. We didn’t get the name of the soap opera but our guide said that the actor’s name is Arjun.

Then the kids got to run around and goof off at the police station, jail and commissioner’s office:

Locked up abroad

Making an entrance

Daddy’s the head of the Maharashtra Police

Our fun-filled adventure ended on a high note at an Asian buffet, where we ate too much and got chased by Chinese dragons.

Mumbai Part I – Dhobi Ghat

About a month ago Paul and I dragged the kids to Mumbai for a long weekend. It was on our list of places to go and Paul had to go there for work, so we went three days earlier and did the sights. It would have been lovely to stay longer, so we could do the city justice but with school and work and life in general, three days was all we had. We knew there was a lot to see and do in Mumbai and we had no prayer of figuring it all out in three days, so we hired a guide to help us see as much as possible.

Mumbai is quite a ways from Delhi, so we flew. We have flown on our last three trips in India and have had good experiences so far. The flight to Mumbai was two hours, so it wasn’t too bad. We stayed at Hotel Svenska, in Andheri, one of the suburbs, which was not ideal because it was quite far from the touristy areas but the hotel itself was nice and the service pretty decent.

Mumbai is a huge city – about 20 million - the size of Delhi or a little larger/smaller depending on who you ask and how they count. It feels big and crowded. It started out as a fishing village, which got its name from the Goddess Mumba Devi. Then the Portuguese came and called it Bombay (good bay) and eventually became a large trading port. It’s a fascinating mixture of the local Marathi plus the imported Muslim, Parsee (Zoroastrian), Christian and even Jewish cultures. It has dizzying shiny skyscrapers and crowded slums, beautiful beachside walkways and alleys you wouldn’t want to walk down because you never know what’s lurking down them, gorgeous hotels and dilapidated fishermen’s shacks. It’s a city of contrasts and surprises, which draws you in and begs to be explored.

We spent our first day mostly in Colaba (the touristy downtown area at the southernmost edge of the city) and Dhobi Ghat (a washermen’s settlement). We ate Persian food at Khyber and then relaxed at the hotel. The second day was more or less dedicated to Bollywood – we went to a couple of studios and got to see a soap opera filmed in one and played voice-over actors in the other, then checked out the beaches of Juhu and Bandra as well as the homes of some famous Bollywood stars (from outside). The more we saw, the more we liked Mumbai. By the end of our trip, we all decided that we could live there, if the opportunity presented itself.

The first place we visited was Dhobi Ghat. It’s a washermen’s community, where about 4000 – 5000 people live and work. Paul and I had seen similar communities in Delhi and kinda knew how they work. We had also seen the critically acclaimed 2011 movie Dhobi Ghat (also known as Mumbai Diaries) in which one of the main characters is a washerman and and lives/works in that community. Our guide arranged for us to go inside the community and we got a chance to talk to the washermen and hear some of their stories. They charge tourists a small fee (about $1) and use the money to provide daycare and some schooling to the kids in the community, of which there were quite a few. Chutney took a nap in his stroller while we were there, so we were able to take quite a few pictures. Here are some of them:

Bales of clothes waiting to be washed

One of the “offices”

Beating the dirt out of the clothes

A little helper amid a pile of old sarees, which will be resold for a dollar or two or upcycled into “new” clothes.

Sarees drying on a roof

And a lot more waiting to be washed under the roof

But it’s not just old clothes that get washed here - new shirts destined for Europe or North America are also pre-washed/pre-shrunk here…

 

… as well as new dresses you may find at the Gap or Old Navy.

The new clothes are taken elsewhere to be ironed and packaged before being shipped overseas but the old clothes get ironed here using 100-year-old charcoal irons. There is electricity in the community but it’s expensive, so they use the old irons.

They’ve figured out a way to hang the clothes to dry without using clothes pins – another way to save money on the whole operation.

They also have a tagging system to ensure nothing gets lost.

This post is already getting quite long and picture heavy, so I am going to pause here but stay tuned for more pictures from Mumbai, as well as from our trip to Hyderabad and the colorful celebration of Holi in Delhi.