Advertisement
Published: December 5th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Roadside cafe
I see this on the drive out to the church I've been going to. Haven't dropped in for a coffee yet though It’s been a while between blogs, but this is a work trip after all. Unfortunately the work aspect has taken up much more of my weekends than I would have liked, but I took the opportunity to get out of the hotel / car / office routine on Sunday and put on my tourist hat for a while.
So first up I headed out to the church I went to the other week, which I really enjoyed. After the service everyone was having a communal lunch, which I joined in on while chatting with a couple of American girls who have been working over here. The food was of course local cuisine, not toooo spicy, but yeah, more than spicy enough for me. Although I do think my spicy food tolerance is increasing…gradually.
Anyway, after lunch I headed back into the city and paid a visit to
Charminar which is this absolutely enormous structure in the middle of an incredibly busy roundabout. The setup reminded me of the arc de triumph in Paris, and believe me, the traffic going around the roundabout was even more chaotic than in Paris (and that’s saying something!)
To actually get to the
Chocolate anyone?
I was actually pretty hungry when I went past this guy selling chocolate wafers... Charminar from where the car was parked I had to cross the road to get onto the roundabout. This was my first major challenge for the day. The locals seem to just kind of put out one hand to indicate to oncoming traffic that they should stop and walk on through the traffic. After a few moments standing in the fruit and veg market kind of area and observing the rather random traffic patterns, a teenage boy came up and tried to sell me some pearls. (Hyderabad is famous for pearls and the locals are very proud of it. Particularly the locals who happen to be selling pearls!) I told the kid I wasn’t looking to buy any pearls and then he wanted to know where I was from and escorted me across the road and jumped me to the head of a queue that was about 20m long. I felt really bad getting some kind of special treatment on entry just because I’m a foreigner. When I discovered that the entry fee for foreigners is actually twenty times the fee for Indians, I felt a little less guilty though. My newly found friend told me he’d wait at the
The local dentist
Spotted this from the top of Charminar and decided it wasn't a bad thing I'd passed up the chocolate earlier. bottom and take me to see more of his pearls when I came out.
You can climb up to about halfway up Charminar, and the stairs were I think the most uncomfortable I’ve been on. Stairs up some of the places we visited in Europe were tight, but the difference here was that there were no little side rails, not a great deal of windows and a huge crowd of people who have a different concept of personal space to me. Not being a fan of small spaces that was a little challenging and I was quiet glad to reach the top!
From the top you could see out over quite a lot of the city, but I found just watching the craziness of the road below pretty entertaining for quite a while. It was really nice to be up away from the busyness of the bazaars below while I took a moment to psych myself up to go shopping.
Yes, I know normally shopping shouldn’t require such preparation, but its actually a little intimidating wandering around by yourself with lots of people staring at you, every shop owner yelling out at you and trying to drag
Charminar
The powerlines ruin the shot a bit, but you can see how much Charminar towers over everything around it you into their shop, a few men following you around showing you various pearl bracelets, rings, earrings, hair ties and anything else you can think of and of course people asking you for money. I guess it just poses a different set of challenges than say an outing to DFO in Sydney. However I was quite determined to get out into it, so I made my way down and out into the thick of things.
My pearl selling friend had disappeared so I was left to cross the road on my own. I spent a few minutes watching the traffic and then decided to forget about the idea of finding a break in the traffic and stepped out in front of the smallest, slowest moving vehicle I could see. The kid on the push bike obligingly went around me and from there it was all easy sailing. The good thing is the traffic actually moves really slowly, so its not like cars/autos/busses/cycles/motorbikes are coming at high speed. It’s kind of fun, and of course, if it’s really busy there is always someone else crossing who you can tailgate.
Wandering up and down among the bangle sellers was pretty cool. Most of the bangles were very elaborate and would probably look way over the top outside of India, but I was quite amazed by how many different ones there were. I made a couple of small purchases, and I’m sure payed too much. I did use Steph’s walk away and make the chase you tip though. I’ll practice my haggling skills more next weekend. I’m going to have to go back wearing open shoes next time so I can try on the many shoes for sale!
Stay tuned, in my next blog - some random observations and stories about my day to day life here. Some of them will be funny, I promise, my trip to work this morning for example...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.089s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0414s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
mum
non-member comment
spicy food and you???
i must admit the idea of you becoming curry and spicy friendly is a little encouraging. you were so-o-o fussy. sounds as though I should send Mrs H next door to go shoe shopping with you. I'll go for bangles and anklets and blue saris (lol).