We really only have one weekend to enjoy here, so Raghu, Sekhar, JC, Anil, and Anil’s driver made sure that we got to pack all the possible tourist activities anyone would ever want to do in Hyderabad into said weekend.
-
- We rode a boat out to see the Buddha statue.
-
- Me and Raghu – Quality analyst as well as the India office’s official photographer
-
- Here’s the Buddha statue on a man-made island. This is basically India’s Statue of Liberty.
-
- Some of us rode this. It’s not as intimidating as it looks – it actually moves quite slowly. It’s basically a ferris wheel that rotates around a vertical axis as opposed to a horizontal one.
-
- Raghu and JC tried to convince Coryndon to ride it. They spent a good 5 minutes in this futile effort.
-
- Brandon’s feet from the vertical ferris wheel
-
- My feet from the vertical ferris wheel
-
- Street cricket
-
- Brandon and I took turns batting and “bowling” (British for “pitching”)
-
- A cube-shaped water tower in the condo complex that will contain Anil’s future home.
-
- Another view from Anil’s future condo complex.
-
- This part of town was still semi-natural but partly super-developed with office buildings and condos.
-
- We went to Shilparamam, a place where local families and tourists alike can enjoy a flea market and a bunch of other activities ad various parts of the day.
-
- I don’t understand this, but I am oddly drawn to it.
-
- This may be the only picture I have of Ian clearly smiling.
-
- Some of the salesmen are smooth as creamed corn.
-
- This sign made me want to buy something just to see if I could break it – and then ask for a refund.
-
- Part of Shilparamam had these paddle boats. I kind of wanted to take one for a spin, but no one else was into it, so I let it slide.
-
- The stray dogs here are the healthiest I have seen on this visit.
-
- Steel as faux bamboo. I’m not sure why anyone would want to make steel look like bamboo, but there you have it. I thought I left Skeumorphism behind when I closed my Mac.
-
- This is Sekhar’s method of cooling off hot chai – increasing the surface area to volume ratio.
-
- Anil took us to a temple on the side of the road
-
- The first landmark office building at the start of Hyderabad’s tech expansion.
-
- While driving around, we got to see the landscape a bit better. We went to the outskirts of town to where the development abruptly stops.
-
- The trade schools along the road tried to one-up each other with more and more official-sounding names
-
- This is probably how all roof tiles are arranged, but I thought this was a clever rain-catching alternating arrangement.
-
- People knock on your car window and ask for money on the street. If you look like an obvious tourist with money, this problem is exacerbated.
-
- Ticket for The Charminar. Raghu informed us that locals get charged something like 5 Rupees, while clear foreigners like myself have a 100 Rupee ticket.
-
- The school groups, like weddings in the area, both have about 10 times the number of people as their American counterparts do.
-
- One of the school kids had sketched the Charminar.
