It has been a week since I posted. Here's the scoop….
Monday - we stayed in at the hotel. Had a pretty mellow day, recovered from that horrendously long flight. Had dinner with a bunch of awesome people.
Tuesday - a group of seven of us went to Golkonda Fort (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golkonda). It is literally bout 35 flights of stairs to climb all the way to the top, and the steps are intentionally uneven, to prevent invading armies from making good time. I made it about 25% of the way and told everyone I was going to head down and meet them in a shady spot near the entrance.
I accidentally created a bit of a ruckus on the way back down. I was expecting people to want to take pictures with me. It happened all over the place last time, and I make an effort to be friendly and handle it with good grace. This time at least a hundred guys asked me on the way down. I tried to get them in groups, but after a bit I was about to faint from the heat so I told them so and headed back down as fast as I could. When I got there, more of the same, and a couple of them were getting a little handsy - standing too close, hand brushing my ass as they were positioning themselves, that sort of thing. To be clear, I don't think I was in any serious danger - it was mostly single guys bugging me, but there were families and small children having picnics all over the place. I found a shady spot where I could sit on some stairs, kind of diagonally with my back and left side against a wall, and then set my bag down on my right side. People could still approach but there was no way they could casually touch me or my stuff and pretend it was an accident. After a few minutes an older Hindi woman came and sat up one step and about two feet to my right. She smiled at me and apologized for not speaking English. I smiled back and said her sari was beautiful (it was, pink and gray silk) and then she sat with me. For two solid hours. Basically she volunteered to be my buffer against the crowd of photo seekers. And it worked - I was still approached, but mostly by families. I was able to people watch comfortably, and have nice conversations with strangers. Lots of people stare (I never saw another American the entire time I was there, and nobody as big as me either), but they all would respond with at least a genuine smile if I smiled and waved at them.
Eventually my group came back and I said thank you to the woman who sat with me. I wish I could have communicated more with her, it was an incredibly generous thing to do, and typical of why I love visiting India despite the hardships of being here.
From there we headed off to lunch at our favorite Chinese restaurant - Aromas of China on the top floor of a modern shopping mall. "Crackling spinach" is the best thing ever, and I think we went through three orders of it, along with everything else. It is funny to be in one foreign place and see how that influences another culture's food. I like Chinese food in the U.S., but this place had dishes I've never seen and like even better.
Then it was back to the hotel, where I discovered the wi-fi works at the lounges around the pool and I worked from there until sunset. We had a great dinner of "Mexican" food at one of the hotel restaurants. Mexican it was definitely not, but still quite tasty.
Wednesday I stayed in at the hotel, spent some time working and then over at the convention center doing setup for the conference.
At midnight my real estate agent called. The bank responded to our last offer with a counter. We accepted and then I spent hours running around like a crazy person trying to get documents signed and faxed back. So. We're buying a house! If all goes well, we'll close June 8 and move in a week or two after that. CRAZY.
Thursday the conference started. It was so much better than last year. Still exhausting, but now we understand the venue, the culture, and the best way to engage with people. We had lots of great conversations and slow but steady traffic to our booth. It was all good.
Friday was pretty much the same. Exhausting but good. A group of us went out to Paradise for dinner (local Biryani chain - best biryani and naan I've ever had). We took a hotel car out, but the driver had to go back because too many people needed rides to the airport. We ended up having a bit of a tuktuk race back to the hotel 3 of us plus the driver in one of them, and I have no idea how, but five of the other guys plus the driver in the other. NO CLUE how they all fit. (Tuktuks are those little yellow and black open three wheel cars that run on kerosene.) The highlight of the evening was actually in the restaurant where Tori (my white travel buddy) and Shar (Our American-Indian work buddy) started doing Stevie Wonder imitations and singing Ebony and Ivory in the middle of the restaurant. The wait staff and patrons had no idea how to respond. Nobody was drinking, we were just so looped from exhaustion. I've seen a lot of funny Indian reactions to us, but this time they just stopped dead in their tracks. HILARIOUS. I don't believe anyone was offended by it. They just didn't know what to do with it.
Saturday we checked out at 9 in the morning. We had to be at the airport by 1:30 for our flight to Goa. We took a car to Charminar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charminar) - which is the Muslim center of the old city. This was actually my first trip out into the streets in Hyderabad without a guide or an Indian friend - but we did just fine. The shopping district around Charminar is where the locals buy supplies for weddings - costumes, jewelry, etc. I bought a double strand of black freshwater pearls and matching earrings. This isn't fine jewelry - but nice costume jewelry that I'll get a lot of mileage out of. Tori picked up some glass and steel bangles.
After that we had the ride of our lives through city traffic to get to the airport. We weren't in a hurry, had plenty of time. It's just crazy to drive in India.
We got to the airport and then to Goa without incident. A car was waiting for us from the hotel and we were checked in within an hour. Goa is definitely a different world from Hyderabad. Still hot, more humid, but a lot more greenery. The standard of living is higher than any state in India, as is the general literacy rate and the locals are healthier and have a greater life expectancy as well. That's not saying a lot, they are still incredibly poor by western standards, but you can see the difference immediately. Even the dogs look healthier here.
The hotel is insane. I have never stayed any place so nice (and I do like a nice hotel on occasion) and the service here is over the top. We had fresh grilled shrimp and red snapper for dinner on the beach under the "super moon". Not a bad way to start.
We spent Sunday being lazy at the pool. Reading, swimming, lather, rinse, repeat. The wind kicked up in the afternoon and we headed back to the room for a siesta. We had dinner at the chinese restaurant here at the resort, and it was pretty good.
Today was our day for adventure. We decided to hire a car and tour a local spice plantation and then do a little shopping. Theoretically I had two things in mind to buy as gifts, and a third thing to fill a request for a friend. Jules picked us up at 10 and we headed for the spice plantation. On the way he says "Would you like to ride an elephant? Wash an elephant?" I said no to both, but Tori said yes, and then I got talked into washing it.
Apparently people bring along a change of clothes for this sort of activity, but we weren't planning for it. This means there will shortly be pictures of me on the interwebs wearing my sports bra and jeans (I refused to strip all the way) washing an elephant. We walked into the river and she was laying on her side, about sixty percent submerged. We scrubbed her back with coconut halves. Then they told me to climb on. I was not particularly scared, but it is quite a big animal, and not the easiest thing to do in a running river while wearing wet denim. I did manage to get on, and she stood stood up and started washing me! Trunk-fulls of water, right on my head, and in between she reached back and played with my toes with her trunk. Of course her handlers were commanding her to do this. Tori took her turn, and then we showered off as best we could. I am terrified of all the crap I could have picked up from wading in a dirty river barefoot. But other than that, a fantastic experience. The elephants seemed to be happy. A couple of them did have a steel ankle cuff on, but they took that off for the rides and to get to the river, and I saw no evidence of damage to the animals from the cuffs. If we had seen any evidence that they weren't treated well, we wouldn't have participated.
After that, we went (still soaking wet) to tour the spice plantation, which was pretty neat. They grow coffee, vanilla, cinnamon, coriander, pepper, bananas, and cashews, but nothing is farmed the way you'd think of it in a western orchard - it just looks like disorganized forest and everything grows together. At the end they served us a buffet lunch and a shot of feni, a local liquor made from fermented cashew fruits. It was pretty strong, and pretty nasty tasting, although it might be good mixed with sprite or ginger ale.
Next were going to drive to the capital city to shop, but pulled over at a place where the driver admits he gets a "coupon" for bringing tourists. I appreciated his honesty about that, and they did have some pretty fabulous merchandise. I ended up buying two small hand knotted wool carpets (about 3 feet by 5 feet each) that I think will end up as wall hangings in the new house. The house is going to have all hardwood and tile floors throughout, so we'll need to hang a lot of fabric to control noise. I also picked up a couple of scarves as gifts and one for me. We decided not to continue on to the capital because it was already late afternoon and we were exhausted and mostly broke. We stopped at two more places on the way back. I picked up another scarf and a little marble mosaic box I had been eyeballing earlier and Tori got a few things as well. Next we stopped at a local grocery to see if Tori could find some unique beer bottles (she collects the labels on her travels). Now we're in for the night - decided on room service for dinner which is on it's way now.
Tomorrow will be another pool day, and we start the journey home around noon on Wednesday. I'm glad for the relaxation day tomorrow, but I'm looking forward to getting home, and impatient to start packing for the move. Lots of stuff to do, and almost no time to do it!