A day in the life...: Hyderabad

Well it was a long and interesting first day. At 3:45 this morning I took off from Dubai and around 8:30, landed in Hyderabad. The first thing I noticed as we were landing is just how rocky this area is. Huge boulders everywhere and lots of rocks. Everywhere you look, there are rocks.

We landed and true to practice, I didn’t check any bags so was able to walk right through immigration and baggage claim lickety splity. In an earlier post I said I wasn’t terribly interested in India as a destination. The moment I walked out of the airport, I knew that had changed. I can’t explain it, but I like this place. I suppose maybe because it’s just so darned interesting. The people are delightful too. Truly, I mean that. They are accommodating, polite (except when driving, more on that later), and generally helpful. I walked out and my driver was walking up with the sign with my name on it. We shook hands and I said thanks for coming. He introduced himself as Mohammedarin, I said “My name is Kirk”. He smiled and said “OK Krik” and something else I didn’t understand. Today was full of a lot of smiling, head nodding and saying “uh huh” without having a clue what he was saying and visa versa.

But, somehow we usually get the point across, with some exceptions. For example, I asked him if theft was a concern. He didn’t understand after multiple tries. “Will people steal things out of cars here?” I asked. Finally, he broke down and called someone to translate. I’d all but given up on the question. After all, I was only trying to make chit chat. But, he’d gone through the trouble of dialing a friend who speaks English well and could translate. So, I asked my question again. “Do I need to worry about people stealing things out of my car?” His friend on the phone didn’t understand my question either. I acted like he had answered my question, said thank you and handed the phone back to Mohammedarin.

Mohammedarin drove me to my hotel, I got checked in, took a shower and got ready to go into the office here. The whole time he just waited in the hot car. I felt terrible. I wanted to ask him to come inside and wait, but it appears that’s not possible or allowed. They have security everywhere here since some terrorists kidnapped and killed a group of people a while back. Most of it seems perfunctory anyways. Maybe if I looked a little more shady they’d take a closer look at me. They have an x-ray machine in front of the hotel and a metal detector to walk through and then they wand you.

The traffic here is nothing short of absolute anarchy. I first noticed it when leaving the airport. There was a couple of guys riding a motorcycle with three very large bags. One was holding a bag, it looked like an army bag full of dirty clothes on the handle bar, the other was holding two of the same sized bags between his legs. Meanwhile, drivers seem to regard all traffic laws as optional.

Here is a list of things I saw today that shocked me in some way:

Poor people on the side of the road no more than 5 feet some of them living in cardboard huts, smashing rocks for a living.
People walking across a street full of cars, bikes, busses, motorcycles and three wheel’ed Clouseau cars hopping between traffic like in the game frogger and still surviving.
About 1000 close calls in about 1.5 hours driving and no accidents!
Clouseau cars with 8 people in them and busses without enough room to hold everyone so extra people hang on outside the bus.
Women working in terrible heat for 13-14 hours without safety gear to build a road.
Me falling asleep in the taxi in spite of all that non-sense going on around me cuz I’m so jet lagged.

Here are some pics I took tonight.