Thanksgiving, and leaving Hyderabad

I've been back in the U.S. since November 16th and insanely busy. Today, though, is the Friday after Thanksgiving, and I'm sitting at the desk in the Kurtz house at the Cape, looking out at Waquoit Bay and finally able to catch my breath a bit.

the view from the desk

First, a few pictures from my next-to-last week-end in Hyderabad. (There are more than just these few in the Picasa album.) Srinivas took us to a temple in Jubilee Hills on Friday night after work. I would have liked to have gotten back to get daylight pictures, but these will have to do. The entrance is flanked by these imposing gentlemen, who look to me like carnival strongmen.





The temple itself was lit like a Christmas tree.



The interior was lovely.



On Saturday I took my final bike ride. The bike continued to give me trouble, with the left pedal crank and splash guards loosening, requiring frequent stops. As I climbed the last hill near the guest house my right pedal broke (it turns out it's plastic, not metal...), and I was able to limp the last half mile home only thanks to a heavy application of duct tape from my water bottle. I've certainly learned a lot about what to look for in a bicycle on this trip.

Anyway, I rode through Jubilee Hills towards Durgam Cheruvu, and up to the "Grand View" water tower I visited last year. This let me get a second take on a view I photographed last year in July.

last year

this year

I used a dirt path to cut across the scrub and into the back of BNR Hills, a gated community I was never able to explore on my previous trips. This brought me to a hill overlooking this:

Is Cinderella home?

They have a nice view out the back, though.



Here's the back of the entrance to BNR Hills.

The southern end of Durgam Cheruvu

My sister Jeannie asked me to bring her a rock from Hyderabad. I did (although she doen't know it yet...), and here's where I collected it.



My last week in India was complicated by a somewhat unexpected wrinkle: my colleague Andy and I were asked to make a two-day trip to Delhi to visit some customers. This meant we had to check out of our guest house and drive to the airport at 5AM Tuesday morning to fly to Delhi.

We had no time whatsoever to do any siteseeing in Dehli, so I took essentially no pictures. The one shot I have is of the entrance signage for the IBM office we worked out of.

From The Final Days

We returned to Hyderabad late Wednesday night. Thursday night the folks at work took Andy and me out to dinner.







Andy and I spent the last few nights at the IBM guest house in Kondapur. It's a pretty decent place: close to the office, nice staff, clean rooms. The view out the dining room window nicely captures modern India:



Note the satellite TV antenna on the roof. This is right next door:



Yes, it's a rice paddy.

Andy left on Friday night. My flight out was Saturday night, so I had Saturday to tie up loose ends. I took Srinivas to an Internet cafe and helped him set up a gmail account. Receiving mail from him is part of what triggered this blog entry. I'm so pleased that I could help him with that. We also went shopping for, of all things, those little plastic buckets that every Indian bathroom has; Katy has expressed a desire to have a particular style for our home. I'd been looking for them since my arrival, without success; we finally found them in a shop in Ameerpet. (I'll post a picture later.) The shop was near this Gurudwara.



After shopping we stopped at a nearby restaurant for tea. I sipped that lovely Indian masala tea and wrote in my journal, and on the way out took these pictures.





From Ameerpet Srinivas and I drove to Nagarjuna Circle to meet with Feroz for dinner. Here are some pictures I took out the car window on the way. I've spent so much time in Hyderabad that I almost don't notice this stuff anymore.





I spent my final dinner in Hyderabad at Feroz's flat in Khairatabad. Srinivas and I picked up food at Chutney's and followed Feroz (who was on scooter) to his place. I finally got to meet Feroz's wife (whose name, sadly, I did NOT retain...). She's very cheerful, but for some reason she looks so somber in all these pictures.









After dinner Srinivas drove me out to the airport, on a newly-opened segment of the Outer Ring Road. (It literally opened the day I left.) I said my goodbye and then entered the in-between space that is modern air travel. I managed to get a business class upgrade for the Hyderabad to Frankfurt leg, making sleep possible. Waiting in the usiness class lounge I had the usual mixture of anticipation and depression that I feel when I leave India. Life in the U.S. just doesn't seem real any more.

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Anyway. Here I am in Falmouth, spending Thanksgiving weekend, as ever, with Katy's family. The sailboat was still in the water, and this morning's activity was to sail the boat to Falmouth inner harbour to be pulled for the winter. Here's the boat leaving, and Katy returning to the dock after dropping off the sailing crew.







Happy Thanksgiving, all.