Hyderabad Hues

Shot (a little shakily) from a car window. I fell in love with the old architecture.

Oh yes, I did! Family holiday to Hyderabad happened, and it was so much fun, mainly because we (my parents, my sister and me) were all together. And because I don't have the patience (and admittedly, the time) to relate everything in loving detail, I give you, impressions in bullet points:

 

• Biryani at Cafe Bahar and Qubani ka Meetha (this apricot and date syrupy sweet dish, served cold. It sounds funny, but trust me, it grows on you. Mmmm...) and Dil Pasand (how cute, no?) and a lot of very comforting cups of Irani tea, which I was completely infatuated with. It's a wonder my clothes still fit.
• Hyderabad has loads of Bakeries at every corner, beautiful flower decorations outside of some shops (because it was Diwali), Telugu and hyderabadi-hindi (which, without a doubt, rocks), some very nice places to go to like a drive through the IT area of the city and Charminar, the Salar Jung Museum, although after a while you do start to get a little tired of looking at antiques. Although may be you wouldn't, Carolina Primavera, fan of antiques :)
• It also has some not-so-great places to go to like Snow World, which if you've ever seen real snow, I plead you to stay away from. I don't know if they've changed the way they are supposed to do things, but we did not enjoy being shoved into a line, given jackets and gloves, made to hand in our footwear and given gumboots (wet from the inside) to wear and what I very strongly suspect were used-socks (ewwwwwwwwww. eww,eww.), and then jostled into another room with ice (which seemed to be mixed with sand or something like that). Eh, I don't want to get into details about the crazed people who were throwing ice at every surface (including our camera). There were things to do of course, like some sliding thing, but it was so annoyingly crowded. Then they announced that there would be snowfall in two minutes. We left pronto, not wanting to get that weird sand-snow in our hair. It was okay, though. We did get a lot of laughs out of the whole thing.
• I love Pune a little more now, because Hyderabad has more honking and noise and traffic than Pune. Which I had not thought was possible. So yes, Pune-1.
• The Hyderabad airport is magnificent (although they do charge you this UDF Fee which is Rs.100 for domestic outbound passengers and Rs.800-something for international outbound. Not so nice). But yes, it is a vision of loveliness (as much as airports can be) and quite comfortable. 

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Impending birthday looming in the horizon of my mind (and calendar), and I have no plans. As I was telling my friend Unmesh, I have a very specific grudge against birthdays (I mean, my own) and he agreed (and bitched in his blog, here). But that's for later. 
And now I find my righteous fingers staring at me reproachfully (drumming themselves on the table. Heh), and I must devote typing-activity to other, more fist-eatingly boring work.

What did you do over the weekend?

 

Yours, 

The Cyniqueen