The Beginning of the End (of my time in India)

My time in India is quickly coming to a close. I leave VERY early in the morning on Thursday, so I essentially only have three more days here.

In my waning days in India, I planned to be a tourist in my own (adopted) town. On Thursday night, I joined a big group of expats and went to a local pup frequented by expats and local Google and Facebook employees. The pub is called 10 Downing, and on Thursday nights they have karaoke. It was actually quite fun, and even more so than in bars in the States, everyone joins in the karaoke singing. The pub itself was quite similar to bars back home, and inside you really couldn't tell that you were in India. The one amusing thing is that whenever they played a song that was conducive to it, everyone started doing the Hustle in whatever small space they could find in the crowded bar.

On Friday after work, two of my co-workers took me to see one of the tourist attractions in Hyderabad - a giant Buddha in the middle of a lake. Most of you are probably imagining the Buddha like I was - sitting cross legged, big belly, etc. In fact, this Buddha was standing tall and was quite slim. Apparently the aforementioned Buddha is the "laughing Buddha," and belongs more to the Chinese. This Buddha was actually the Gautama Buddha, who is considered to be the founder of Buddhism. The statue itself is a monolith carved from white granite, and is apparently the largest single-stone carving of Buddha in the world. To get to the Buddha you have to take a boat, and I was vaguely reminded of visiting the Statue of Liberty (except it was a shorter boat ride, a smaller statue and there were no tacky souvenirs). Here's a picture:


From there we went out to dinner at this really neat restaurant called Tansen. It felt very classy, and the decor was really neat:


On Saturday, one of my teammates and I were planning on going to Golkanda Fort, another famous Hyderabad landmark. She met me at my apartment, and no sooner had we gotten in the car when we learned about some disturbances on the other side of town, near the fort. I'm not entirely clear on the details (you can try to decipher them here if you're interested), but from what I understand a legislator was stabbed several times, and when his supporters came to defend him, several shots were fired. The part of town where this happened is heavily Muslim, and apparently there are periodically conflicts there between the Muslims and the Hindus. Because of the turmoil, shops in the area were forced to close and people were advised not to venture there. As such, we changed our plans and went to the mall instead.

Unfortunately the unrest also disrupted our plans for today, which originally included checking out more of the Old City. Instead, I ended up treating myself to brunch and some time by the pool at Novatel, a fancy hotel in the city. It was a relaxing afternoon, although the heat and sun were pretty intense. The temperature this afternoon was around 95 degrees, and the sun was exceedingly strong. As such, I sat by the pool for about an hour then called it quits since the heat was making me lightheaded.