Hyderabad

-
We were a little late arriving at Lingampalli but that made it a little easier for our friend to collect us.
We were taken to our friends apartment just 6km away and passed through a tall, sophisticated jungle of buildings. This was definitely a different side of India and a massive sophisticated IT hub.

We rested, ate a delicious lunch and chatted before our friend and his wife started their remote tech jobs for big international companies.

We left them to it and walked along the main road. We passed a huge botanical garden on one side of the road. On the other was a fancy cycle area.

We arrived at the crossroads and asked about buses to the centre of Hyderabad. This is a huge city. The centre is 22km away! It was still a fair walk to the bus stop. We found out that there was a metro station too but this was also a little far ...


We decided to abandon our trip to the centre and went shopping. Just opposite was a huge mall gleaming with newness.


We went straight through the food court without stopping for even a snack. We were heading to the 5th floor - to snow world!

We watched on the big screen and saw what people came here to do. There was an area for snowball fights, toboggan rides and all sorts of snow related activities. They all wore huge red and blue snow over coats and seemed to be loving it!

We continued to explore in air conditioned comfort before we were shopped out. We walked back along with the main road to our friends apartment where we rested and they completed their working day.

We spent the evening eating! First it was Pani Puri and channa samosa washed down with juice. The juice was made from a fruit that tasted like half lemon, half orange.


Next it was time for us to visit our friends favourite restaurant. Bring on the famous Hyderabad Biryani! The restaurant was very fancy and we received 'silver service' from the waiters. We tried the traditional mutton biryani and chicken biryani too. If the giant portions weren't enough we also had a delicious chicken kebab covered in egg white to form a meringue! So you think that would be it, no it was not!


We headed to a funky street to eat some more... One place was super busy serving up lentil dosa. We tried it even though fully expanded. Ice cream would have filled our small gaps but didn't look great so we opted for coffee instead.


We drank coffee, played Jenga and finally retired to bed!

Popular posts from this blog

Portsmouth

-
Image
Up at 6.55 to meet our 7am breakfast slot. Breakfast was amazing and we ate the lot from dried fruit to double bacon and eggs. All washed down with posh coffee - awesome. Packing the bikes was easy but it takes a little bit of time ... We started our journey about 8.30. We passed our friend's house, his kids school and his allotment. We got a little lost in Southampton due to road closures but after a little back tracking from the scary dual carriageway, all was good. A lot of our route followed the National Cycle Trail 246, however it kept disappearing into nowhere. We eventually found it again but miles away from where we last saw the signs. We passed over lots of water today, saw lots of boats and had puncture number 2! Fixed, we headed off again. A few diversions, some nice tracks and now we could see the Spinnaker tower in the distance. This added a little motivation to the pedalling. A quick stop in Waitrose to stock up on goodies and we arrived at our destination - Portsmout...
Read more

Travelling south

-
Image
Our alarm woke us early as we have to catch the 8am train, which is about an hour's travel away.  Two friends were due to give us a lift to the bus stop on the back of their motorbikes.  However one overslept so the other asked his brother in law to give us a lift in his car!  Rather than dropping us at the end of the road at the bus stop, he kindly took us to the bus station. A bus was about to leave so we jumped on.  This bus took us back into Kozhikode where it was a short walk to the train station.  On arrival we discovered the train we were going to catch was delayed by 1.5 hours.  However another train, which took longer, was running on time so would get us there half an hour before our original train now would.  We bought our tickets and waited.  The station was filling up fast, which is always worrying when you only have a general ticket, so no allocated seat ...  and the journey is 5.5 hours. The train arrived on time and we jumped in a carriage which was less crowded, alt...
Read more

First Day Explorers

-
Image
After a good night's sleep, we woke early...ish for breakfast. We were hoping for a traditional Indian spicy fair but got a traditional boiled egg, bread and jam. We washed it down with a hot cup of Chai, so all was good. We ventured out in search of a few sites, however were easily distracted by fresh fruit platters, mango lassis and mobile phone cover shops. Next, an ATM stop to test various SBI machines. One small branch failed but the head office one worked. This was near the Mumbai stock exchange, complete with bull outside. We ended up at Horniman circular garden. An interesting name but the garden was being 'refurbished' - dug up. Marine drive is famous amongst the people of Mumbai. A huge boulevard next to the sea for romantic strolls. The stroll today wasn't filled with romance, more noise pollution as the whole sea defence boulevard was being fixed. Almost all of it for mile after mile. We had to walk on the dual carriageway but soon got fed up and headed inla...
Read more