Folding bike

Just in case anyone is curious about the bike and how it is packed.


Here's the bike and its accessories stowed in the suitcase (which is a standard Samsonite model). You can see the only tools necessary for the packing job up on the lid of the bag. The only parts that are removed are the pedals, handlebars, and wheels. Everything else simply folds up into a compact package.


Here's the same bag with about 10 days of riding clothes also packed in. Everything cycling related is in the bag except for my helmet.


And here's the bag, all closed up and ready for travel.

Pretty cool, eh? The suitcase provided by the company costs $150 more than the one I bought at my local luggage store, but it is exactly the same size (possibly exactly the same model?).

Hyderabad Wrap Up

Unfortunately, the rest of my trip was pretty uneventful. I had planned to head north the weekend after my Goa trip, but without taking yet more time off from work, a 2 day excursion was not worth the expense or effort. Hyderabad isn't the most well connected airport in the world, so any trip requires at least one transfer and a fairly long airport wait. I really wanted to see Darjeeling, but with a 4 to 8 hour transit from the nearest airport into Darjeeling, it just wasn't in the cards. In the end, I wound up spending my final weekend in Hyderabad, conducting interviews of potential engineering candidates. That effort paid off, at least, and I was able to settle on two candidates, one of whom has already accepted the position. In truth, the weekend was a waste of time, since all but one of the candidates who were scheduled cancelled at the last minute, but since the temps were soaring up over 110 all weekend long, I didn't really miss much by sitting in the office working.

I have to admit, however, that India started to demoralize me after a while. 2 weeks in, I was having a hard time maintaining my enthusiasm. I blame finishing "A Fine Balance" to some degree, as it made it impossible not to focus on the abject poverty that is in evidence everywhere you go in Hyderabad.

On the day that I left, I took some real photos of the slum/ghetto just underneath my hotel. Bear in mind that this is the nicest neighbourhood in Hyderabad - where all of the state government officials live. These were all shot just as the folks 'downstairs' were getting ready for the day. In all probability, all of these people have some kind of job. They are not homeless, at least not in the sense that we think of it in the US.






There's something particularly tragic about watching a child play in such conditions.


She was woken up by the rooster, who insisted on crowing right by her head.


As crappy as it looks, it wasn't for lack of caretaking by the residents. There was all kinds of sweeping and cleaning going on while breakfast was being prepared.


This guy was bathing as best he could - with absolutely no privacy and very limited access to water.


Not surprisingly, chickens weren't the only livestock wandering around the area.

And these kinds of scenes really were visible everywhere, and were far from the worst things I saw. On my final saturday night, I went for a midnight ride around the city, and everywhere I went, the one constant were the groups of people sweeping the streets clean in front of corporate office buildings. In Russia, seeing old women sweeping the streets was a common occurrence, and the fact that they had sticks cut from local trees tied to their broomsticks was something of a surprise. But in India, even the broomstick is a luxury. Everywhere you go after dark, you see women (and men) bent over at 90 degrees, sweeping the ground with handfuls of branches. Now try to imagine an economy in which providing broomsticks to your street sweepers isn't economically useful. Cheaper to just hire more poor people and let them destroy their bodies doing the meanest of manual labour.

Weekend in Goa

It turns out that an old friend from high school has family that lives in India ad Brandon was going to be in India at the same time I was. Fortunately for me, his parents live in a beach resort, which was sure to make a nice change from the heat of Hyderabad. I took a friday off and hopped a plane to Goa, which is on the West coast of India, a few hundred miles south of Mumbai. I didn't know it in advance, but I was about to experience a little piece of tourist India (or maybe colonialist India). Brandon's family lives about a 1 hour drive north of the airport, but sent a driver to pick me up for what was to turn out to be a mostmemorable drive.

The roads in Goa are very narrow. I'm not sure I ever saw a place where they were truly wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other without using the shoulder. Now, you'd think this might be cause for vehicles to slow down when passing each other - but you'd be wrong. Mass wins in Goa, and he with the heavier vehicle simply powers through, expecting anyone else to get the heck out of the way, and that includes passing vehicles going the same direction around blind turns - with a drop into the ocean on one side if you're really lucky. We were in some kind of sport utility vehicle. The only time my driver evergave up the right of way was when confronting an oncoming bus. In any other circumstance, he'd simply tap the horn, move out until most of the vehicle was in the clear, and put his foot to the floor until the other vehicle got out of the way. To make matters more entertaining, he didn't seem to be aware of the art of downshifting in order to aid acceleration. I will say that his ability to pass vehicles with only centimeters to spare was unsurpassed by anything I've experienced before, including lane splitting on motorcycles in LA. I was sitting on the left hand side of the car, and lost count of the number of times I was absolutely convinced we were going to rub the car we were passing. It was a white-knockle ride, to be sure, but we somehow managed to arrive in one piece.


And it was quite a place to arrive to, as well. The house is situated a few hundred feet above sea level, on a hillside in a small enclave of custom built homes. In keeping with the outdoor lifestyle of Goa, every floor has a large balcony, an the rooftop has a large open air space as well as a glass-enclosed, air conditioned room where the family eats breakfast and often has an early evening drink, as well.


Needless to say, the views are superb, although this is only the view from the first floor (2nd floor, to americans) balcony.


The pool was another integral part of the Goa lifestyle. We were in the pool before lunch every day, and often again in the early evening. There's also a steam room.

In a nice piece of foresight, Brandon's parents even had a small elevator built into the house, since they've retired there and intend to live out there days in it. In fact, Brandon's mom is already suffering macular degeneration in both eyes, so being able to give the many stairs a miss is going to become increasingly important. She's an avid reader so I enjoyed showing her my Amazon Kindle, which is a nifty e-book device that should allow her to read for far longer than she'd be able to with printed books, as it is capable of displaying text in a number of font sizes. I imagine that charities like the Braille institute have even more appropriate devices, but if I spend more time in India, I bet I can help them out with accessibility technologies around the house.

It was impossible not to talk about the cost of living in Goa, and while I won't reveal the build cost of the house I was staying in, I will say it was remarkably affordable for what it was, though there has even been a housing price boom in Goa. And even at current prices, a 2 bedroom place close to the water comes in at something like 20% of the price of the equivalent in LA. That's right, you can own the whole thing for the cost of a reasonable downpayment in LA. A driver will set you back another $100/month, as will a chef. It's hard not to fantasize about the lifestyle one could lead there. In fact, a weekend place in Goa might be the only thing to make living in Hyderabad tolerable, if such a thing should become a requirement of the job.

Brandon actually had to leave for Hong Kong and points east the day after I arrived, so I spent quite a bit more time with his folks than I did with him. But before he left, he attempted to expose me to a little of the corona-advert lifestyle of the place. We set out for an aperitif at the local Taj hotel, where single malt scotch and a cuban cigar on the veranda while listening to live jazz (and it wasn't half bad, either) kicked off the evening. From there, we went to a Thai restaurant for some excellent food, and then made a half hearted attempt to track down some nightlife, but the last charter flight of the season had left that afternoon and the town was basically deserted.

Brandon took off the next day and his parents took over as hosts.


We had lunch at this bar/restaurant, where the staff would periodically show up to move chairs and tables around in order to ensure that the customers remain in the shade. One constant in india is the level of customer service that is lavished upon wealthy westerners (where 'wealthy' is a relative term that applies to anyone who makes more than minimum wage in the US). I actually found it increasingly annoying over the course of my sojourn there, but I suppose it is something you get used to. Should you dare to attempt to serve yourself seconds while at a restaurant or pour yourself some more water, a waiter will rush over and attempt to take over the job. I think I managed to carry my own bicycle up to my hotel room exactly once in 3 weeks. And this is all done for what would be considered fairly small tips in the US - usually less than 10% of an already small bill.


Given that Goa caters almost exclusively to foreign visitors (Russians, Brits, and very wealthy indians), it really could be a beach resort almost anywhere in the world. The jetskis and windsurfing equipment belongs to the luxury hotel on the water. The restaurants all tend to be some kind of fusion between asian and western flavours. There are no slums, bad smells, or overt signs of poverty. It was a far cry from Hyderabad, and while not unpleasant, left me feeling conflicted over the role and influence of westerns in India, not that I wasn't already.

In Goa, it has gotten to the point where the government has actually forbidden people who are not "People of Indian Origin" (PIOs) to own property in Goa, though it seems a little like closing the barn door after the animals have already gotten out. In any case, much like in Baja California, it is easy enough to find a bank or willing PIO to hold the deed to your property and rent it to you for a nominal fee. It feels like something of a moot point, as the vast majority of Goan businesses, homes, and roads are within about 10 feet of sea level and it seems increasingly unlikely that they won't be underwater inside of 50 years.

In fact, through much of my time in India, it was hard to get the image, from An Inconvenient Truth, of just what a significant rise in sea level would do to the populated areas of India and Bangladesh. Such events are going to make the refugee movements of east africa and post-partition india look like a cake walk. Imagine 300-500 million desperately poor and hungry people on the move. If we are unable to muster the willpower to do something about the impending environmental disaster, I hope that we're at least able to prepare for the catastrophe that is sure to result. Though, in reality, I expect that the cynical planners in western governments see such eventualities as just the kind of population reductions we need in order to reduce demand on shared resources.

Ok, on with less depressing material

There wasn't much by way of significant sights to be seen in the part of Goa where I was. The tourism indisutry there is all about laying on the beach by day and hitting the nightclubs by night (I arrived on the first day of the off-season, so there wasn't much to do at all, in my case). There was, however, an old Portuguese fort on the hill above the house, and, of course, I had brought my bicycle along for the trip. I nearly left it behind, but at the last moment, decided that if I had made the effort to bring a bike all the way to India from the states, I could at least muster the energy necessary to pack it up for my weekend trips. So on Saturday afternoon, I took off up the hill to see what I could see.


And quite a hill it was, too. Not too terribly long, but most definitely steep, not that this picture makes that apparent. I actually had to take a 5 minute rest before making the summit, which was pretty rare for me on this trip. My legs had been able to take anything I threw at them until that point. And, as usual, the crazy westerner on the funky bike was quite a point of attraction - more so than the actual tourist attractions I was usually.


And, of course, there are the inevitable cows to contend with on the road.


At the summit is a fort that consists of a wall and a lighthouse and little else. Here's the lighthouse. I didn't climb it. I'm both lazy and unwilling to leave the bike unattended in a place where it will take me several minutes to respond if someone decides to mess with it.


Here's a shot that shows the wall, too. It is thick enough that there is a path up on the wall. You can see folks walking along it. The ramp up was incredibly steep. My bicycling shoes had very little traction and I very nearly found myself descending it on my ass. I do not envy the soldiers who had to haul cannons up onto the rampart.



As usual, the bike was a tourist attraction. It's interesting that I really grew to detest the attention that was paid to me in restaurants and at the office just for being a westerner, but I never really mind the attention I attract on the bike, at least when it isn't holding up my schedule excessively.



This was a newlywed couple on their honeymoon who I couldn't say no to, so they became the first random strangers other than my hotel staff to ride the bike.


Some random guy.


The big house on the hill is also a tourist attraction. It was closed while I was up there, so I can't tell you what it is exactly. Maybe the portuguese governor's house? The house farther down the hill turned out to be a private residence. Some Russian oligarch, I'm sure.


Definitely a russian, though, as you could tell by the ridiculous opulence of the place. This is the top of the driveway. With 3 valets waiting, just in case someone should drop by.



Random scenery from the trip back down the hill. I actually wound up riding up and down the hill 4 times just to get some distance in. I tried to ride along the flatlands at the bottom of the hill, but the traffic was just too ugly, so I resorted to running laps up the hill, instead.


There are lots of random places to by tourist tchotchkes. I browsed around one such place, but it was basically the same stuff you can find in indian furniture stores in the US, at prices that were only marginally discounted.


And, to close, a not terribly flattering shot of Brandon and I.

Catching up

I've got some definite catching up to do on this blog thing, so bear with me as I rush through the less entertaining stuff.

The Monday after my cycling adventures was a national holiday, but I had to get some work done, so I basically just hid in my hotel room and cranked away all day long. It really does suck trying to combine pleasure travel with business travel.

I had scheduled a little team building for Tuesday. One of my primary motivations for taking this trip was so that I could get to know the people who work for me a little. Prior to this, they were just typed words over IM or email, and it is impossible to manage people about whom you know nothing. I can't play to their strengths or minimize their weaknesses, let alone ensure that they are happy with their work. So, at the team's suggestion, we took an afternoon off and drove to a go-kart track that also offers a bunch of other activities - everything from archery and shooting to rock climbing, roller skating, and billiards.

As soon as we arrived, I knew that mistake number one was not grabbing a couple other groups from the office to come with us. Unlike similar places in the US, which have all kinds of corporate business going on during the day, we had the place to ourselves. And racing go-karts with 5 people really isn't all that entertaining. Still, a little adversity isn't the worst thing for getting to know one another, anyway. The karts were fun, but it was abundantly clear that none of my engineers has spent any time behind the wheel of a car of any kind. Poor Latha was inching around the track at about half speed. The guys got up to reasonable speed relatively quickly, but we were so spread out, it really had no vibe of competition whatsoever.


That's Venkat, who I actually had a little difficulty passingby the end of the session.


After the driving, Latha expressed an interest in trying out the roller skating. And quality skates they were, too - for 1962

Needless to say, none of the team had ever so much as placed a skate upon their foot. The 'rink' was just a slab of concrete with some painted tires defining an oval. Right from the start, I was seriously concerned about someone having their feet get out from under them and shatter their wrist when they hit the ground. The crashes happened - repeatedly. Fortunately, injuries were avoided.


There's the team leader, Vasudeva, just getting going.


That's Siva, joining the fray.


This is Venkat. This is his first job out of university.

The tragedy of the day was that as I was uploading all of the photos to my photo site on the following day, my hard drive crashed. I lost all but 14 photos from the day and every single one of the videos I shot. Of course, I'd already deleted them from my camera. I had a backup of my entire computer from the day before, so the only thing I lost was the photo gallery from this event.


The hilarity of this scene just cannot be conveyed by the image. All 3 of them moved exactly like zombies from a George Romero movie. I don't think one of them rolled a foot more than an inch in any direction, but they very carefully stepped around the track, arms akimbo, moving for all the world like the living dead. I was cracking up on the sidelines, with absolutely no way to convey why. Not a lot of Romero fans over here in India, I think.


It took Latha a while to find shoes that worked (they were about 4 sizes too big, though), and she could barely move without falling over, initially. I have absolutely no idea what is considered inappropriate contact between a man and a woman in India, but I had to grab her and lift her back onto her feet a couple of times just to get her over to this rail. She did eventually manage a complete circuit of the track, though, as did everyone else.

To be fair, those craptastic skates were pretty hard to skate on. The ones I had didn't even have the two axles parallel to each other. If I allowed my feet to roll, they would each describe a slightly different arc along the ground.


You can almost see in this picture that the wheels are cockeyed.


Here's Latha and I, having survived our circuit of the rink. I don't think roller skating was quite as much fun as Latha had imagined it might be.

I'm going to cut this short, as I've run out of pictures and none of the other 'events' was much more successful. The archery equipment was way too badly damaged to have a hope of shooting straight. Their experience with guns was such that I had to show them how to hold the air-rifle we were given to shoot with for that event - though I did prove to still be a crack shot, even with that crappy gun. I have no idea why I'm such a good shot, as I've only been shooting maybe a half dozen times in my life, but I tend to hit what I'm aiming at. Must be my far-sightedness coming into play.

The interesting part of the day, at least for me, was when I took them all out to dinner. I have very limited experience of the dining choices in Hyderabad, but my engineers don't make enough money to have experience with it at all, I'm afraid (I don't set their rates). So I figured if we were gonna do something outside their range of experience, we may as well go all the way, so I took them to a pretty fancy restaurant that does a fusion of indian, thai, and western cuisine.

Things got interesting right away. For starters, the menu was exclusively in english, and while they can read and write fluently, they weren't recognizing food names, especially since many of them were actually french and italian and such. So I had to interpret the menu for them as best I could. They eventually just asked me to order for them, so I tried to get a variety. We were 2 vegetarians and 3 omnivores, so I had to get things for everyone. For starters, we had some spicy fried chicken pieces drizzled with wasabi sauce and an asparagus, gruyere, puff pastry thing. The veg option went down really well. The whole table was pretty enthusiastic about them, and it was clear these were flavours that my team were not at all familiar with.

The shocker came when the entrees arrived. I can't find a menu online and it has been a week, so I couldn't tell you what I ordered anymore, but as soon as the food arrived, one thing came clear - nobody besides myself had ever eaten with cutlery before. I demonstrated as best I could, and they got the hang of it relatively quickly, though at one point, I did catch Siva pushing his food onto his knife with his fork and then lifting the knife to his mouth to eat. I figured the eating by hand thing that I had witnessed in the lunchroom was a preferential thing, not a total lack of familiarity with eating utensils!

The conversation around the dinner table revealed some more shockers. But first, some background.

At my mom's suggestion, I've been reading a wonderful novel called "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry. Much of the book is set in the time immediately after Indian independence and the partition of the country into India and Pakistan, as industrialization first started to gain a foothold and the rural population began to migrate into the cities in greater numbers. Several of the most important characters have to "break" out of their place in society (a "caste," which defined exactly what work you were eligible to do and who you could interact with, socially, in a strict heirarchy) in order to learn what was supposed to be a more useful skill in the city. Much of the book is spent illustrating the enormous difficulties they have to overcome in order to make the transition to city life, which included living in shanty town slums, abuse by police and government alike, and pretty much every hardship you can possibly imagine.

At the time of the dinner, I was in the midst of that very story, and what started to become clear to me is that every single one of my engineers is also the first of their family to leave a rural village to gain an education and come to the city. And much of their stories have direct parallels to the stories in the book. Granted, they aren't living in a garbage heap on the side of the road (though people still do, here), but they are living in tiny rooms in hostels on the outskirts of town. I didn't want to pry into just how good or bad conditions in the hostels may be, as I don't want to emphasize the difference between their lives and mine, but my suspicion is that the book has probably given me a pretty good idea of just how bad it may be. One long weekends like the one we just had, they all go back to their families in the village, which may only be 120-200km away, but which may take as much as 8 or 10 hours to travel to.

In fact, my team leader, Vasudeva, went home on Friday as a single man and came back on Tuesday engaged to be married to a woman he had only met that very weekend. And they'll be getting married by the end of the month! In fact, they've rushed the wedding a little in order make it possible for me to attend, though it isn't clear that I'll be able to, as it is still after my scheduled departure date. I'm incredibly honoured that he would make such an effort to have me attend his wedding. It won't be a lavish, 3 day party, as upper class indian weddings are rumoured to be, as he comes from a rural farming family. He says it will last from about 11am to sometime in early afternoon. So hopefully, the airline will be accommodating about a schedule change.

Anyway, back to my story. Between the arranged marriage and the first generation city-dwelling engineers, the book started to pick up a lot of relevance to me. Unfortunately, while beautifully written and incredibly poignant, it is also nothing if not depressing, and I'm afraid I now find it impossible to see the India around me without at least a little of the tint that was applied by the book.

I really tried to come to India with an open mind and open heart about what it would be like, but if I'm honest with myself, what I've seen so far really isn't all that pleasant. Admittedly, Hyderabad is anything but a center of tourism, which doesn't help things any. There is almost no expat presence, and socializing with my employees just isn't possible, both because of cultural inhibitions on their part and because, quite frankly, they can't really afford to have fun - a fact that I really don't like, to be honest. When I ask them what they do for fun, their only answer is the occasional Hindi movie. Between the hours spent commuting to and from work from their hostels on the outskirts of town and the long journeys home on the weekends, they have very little leisure time and I don't think they are overly inclined to spend their hard earned cash on frivolities (not that I'm not happy to treat them). On the one hand, I'm sure they are making more money than anyone else in their family can even dream of, but on the other, it is hard for me to justify, to myself, paying them so little. The only real fix I have available to me is to work to grow the company and lift everyone else along with it.

So that was the teambuilding day. It was actually pretty successful. The more junior team members are much more comfortable talking directly to me, and I know much more about them as individuals, so my major goals were accomplished, even if not in the manner I had expected.

It's Alive!!

Not to worry folks, the traffic hasn't got me yet. I'm just slacking on the blogging thing. More later tonight, I think

Don't Squeeze the Charminar

On Sunday, my plan was to ride to the Charminar, which is a monument to commemorate the plague in the local area in 1591. Charminar translates to "Four Towers" which ought to give you a pretty good idea of the architecture of the building.

The first couple of kilometers of the ride were the same as the ride to Golkonda, so it took me almost 10 minutes to get lost this time. But my sense of direction in this place is improving a bit, so I just pointed the bike in the general direction I needed to go and hoped for the best. The Charminar is in town, the heart of the oldest section of town, actually, so unlike the trip to Golkonda, there was no single correct road.

As usual, the white guy on a bike never fails to be the center of attention. I'm not sure if it's the white guy factor, the somewhat strange looking bike, or merely the existence of a westerner out in the streets on a conveyance that is surely viewed as only suitable for children or peasants who use them for work. I'd like to go out on a normal looking bike and see who the reactions change.


It doesn't help that my bike is exactly the same shade of orange as very autocab in town, I suppose. Every photo taken on this ride ws shot from a moving bicycle, so you'll have to forgive the focus issues that arise on occasion.

The autocabs, incidentally, are the single worst cause of pollution in this town. That much is apparent without much of a survey. They run 2-stroke engines, meaning they burn oil with every combustion event and the smoke coming from the exhaust varies from a slightly visible black smoke to vast clouds of choking grey pollution. When an example of the latter drives by, the only real choice is to stop pedaling and breathe shallow until the air clears. If stuck in traffic behind one, I turn around and create some space.


I eventually asked a passing motorcyclist if I was heading in the right direction and he told me he was riding right past the Charminar and would be happy to take me. That's him, above. He was kind enough to continue to stop and wait for me even after he got me to the correct street. A good thing, as I failed to recognize the thing (I was expecting something more grand, I guess) and rode right on past. He caught up with me a few hundred meters later and turned me around.


This part of the city is incredibly densely populated, both by people and vehicles. There is almost no advantage to be head by being on 2-wheels, though I suppose the wider vehicles were a smidge slower than the rest of us. Every available space was filled by a motorcycle, bicycle, rickshaw, autocab, or pedestrian. Let your attention lapse for even a moment and someone will take your space before you can blink. Those are the towers of the Charminar off in the distance, but there i an arch blocking the view of the structure.


Here's the Charminar coming into view as I ride through the arch. The proximity between the two is what caused me to think the Charminar was just another, more ornate, arch, though traffic does not run through it, but around it. You can see that there's a fairly dense crowd of people lining the walkway over the road if you click on the image to view the larger version.


This building came into view after I was turned around by my 'guide.' I've got no idea what it was. Stopping and dealing with the people who would inevitably crowd me if I locked up the bike was more than I wanted to deal with. I think I'll be confining my rides to destinations out of town, in future.


Here's a shot of the Charminar as I approahc from the other side. I'm reasonably certain it is identical on all sides. I probably should have climbed up inside the thing, but didn't want to deal with it for something that had left me a litle underwhelmed. The ride was fun, though.


In my ongoing quest to document the largest number of people on a motorcycle at one time, here's a family of 4. All my shots so far seem to be of Muslim families, but the muslims have no monopoly on motorcycle crowding.


One last shot of the crazy street scene and a momentary break in traffic. My employees commute upwards of an hour each way in traffic like this. They live 20km or less from the office, but commute for 2.5 hours every day. Ugh!

My camera somehow lost at least half of the photos I shot on this trip. On my way home, I got thoroughly lost and well off the beaten track. Far enough off of it that I was genuinely a little nervous. I could have been made to disappear very easily and the attentions I was getting weren't nearly as good natured. That said, I never saw evidence of overt danger. I'm sure the bicycle would constitute a significant percentage of a year's wages in some of the neighbourhoods I wandered through, though, so it seems unlikely the thought didn't occur to some as I rode through. Fortunately, my faith in human nature was rewarded and after asking only a single person or directions, I found my way back to a road I recognized.

I wish I hadn't lost the photos of the neighbourhoods I wandered through, though, as I have no intention of going back there intentionally.

I had one unpleasant experience on the way to the Charminar, though. A beggar approached me while stopped in traffic. A not uncommon event. This guy was missing both arms at the elbow and his face was disfigured, too. My assumption was leprosy, though I have nowhere near enough knowledge to be certain of that. The fact that when I shook my head no, he made an effort to rub his stumps on me makes me think I was correct. It also gives me quite the heebie jeebies. Fortunately, I managed to step back out of the way. His stump brushed my arm but mostly contacted my sleeve. My physician sister will read this and inform me of just how bothered I should be by this, so until then, I'm not going to fret about it.

It was definitely an experience I wasn't expecting to have in India and hope not to repeat.

The ride home was uneventful Went out to a late dinner with Pawan and his wife and had the best indian food I've had in my life. Had the leftovers for lunch on Monday and they were every bit as good the second time.

Photo Views

By the way, all of the photos are rigged so you can view a much larger version if you click on the photo. And it will open in a new window so you don't lose your place.

Relativity

I guess I should stop complaining about the rock hard mattress I sleep on here...I came home from a late dinner with Pawan and his wife (and I retract my statement that Indian food in London compares well to Indian food in India. Go to a good restaurant here and prepare to be blown away!), and discovered that the hotel staff accommodations, at least for the lower level employees, consist of sleeping on a blanket spread on the marble floors downstairs. The guy who works the gate was sleeping outside, on the walkway - mosquitos and all. The hard-as-a-plank mattress on which I sleep surely compares most favourably to a marble slab.

Golkonda Ride - Part 2

Coasting down into the town of Golkonda proved uneventful. The town itself has medieval (or medieval-looking) walls that you pass through to enter.



This is the gate to the town that I came through. Its hard to hold the camera level while riding, so I've straightened and cropped where I can.



The town itself is pretty uninteresting. Not too terribly poverty-stricken. Narrow cross strets and a single main street with small shops lining it. And a goat.



This was my first view up the hill to the fort, via a side street. Kids never fail to take a keen interest in the bicycle.



They could care less about the motorcycles that make up about 50% of all traffic, but the crazy-looking folding bike is a hit with everyone, especially kids.



As I pulled into the center of town, I saw a crowd and what turned out to be a small stage set up to promote a local cricket team. They were out drumming up support for a team playing in the national professional league in this tiny little town. One thing is abundantly clear - Indians take their cricket very seriously. Way more seriously than the brits. And cricket players here are public personalities, many of whom are flashy and extravagant in their behaviour much the way NBA stars are in the US - or at least the indian equivalent. All of the news channels were running a story on the day of my arrival about one popular pro who had been banned for a number of years that day for some kind of unsanctioned behaviour. I never figured out what, exactly.



It took about 10 seconds for my presence to be noticed, and I was quickly swarmed by smiling friendly faces. Had I pointed my camera down a little, it would have revealed about 10 kids at waist level touching and futzing with the bike. I discovered later that both my headlight and taillight were on after this stop. It took me 10 minutes to figure out how to turn either one of them on when I first purchased them, but the indian kids had them sussed in about 10 seconds.



Of course, the guy running the promo had to retain his audience, so I was called up on stage. This is the guy who was watching my bike for me. Yeah, it made me a little nervous, but I needn't have worried. One advantage of the bike's popularity is that any thief would have to do his work in full view of at least 15 curious bystanders. An act that would be nearly impossible, I think.



I was asked to judge a cricket trivia contest. I was also asked about my favourite cricketer, and I was actually able to dredge up a name from my years in England who was sufficiently famous that there would be no doubt that they'd recognize the name (Ian Botham, if you must know).



The quiz was conducted entirely in Telugu so I couldn't even tell when questions were being asked, let alone who got them correct. If it weren't for the kids down in the front pointing out who got each one correct, I'd have had no chance. As it was, my scores were far from accurate. I bailed out as quickly as I could and got back on my way to the fort.



You'll find lots of pictures of kids here because one of the things I've already taken away from this place is the magic of how facile kids are at finding happiness in even the most abject of circumstances. These kids probably aren't too terribly poor by rural indian standards, but I've seen kids with bright, shining smiles playing with each other in those godawful piles of rubbish that qualify as roadside shanties here. It really puts things in perspective for a westerner. It also makes you want to give all your money away.



I rarely pass up an opportunity to photograph a fellow bicyclist - usually because they are often one of the aforementioned smiling kids. I don't know why they so rarely smile for the actual photo.



This one was thrilled to be allowed to climb aboard (I didn't really have a say in the matter, truthfully). Everyone wants to ride it, including the staff at the hotel. So far I haven't allowed it, though the hotel staff have an appointment for Monday morning.



Just around the corner from the cricket promotion, I finally found the entrance to the fort.



This map of the fort does no justice to the elevation change that occurs from the gate to the top. It must be 1000 feet or more and steep, too



Here's a pretty good view of the hill.



I didn't get 5 feet into the fort before running into my photo friends from the Tombs. This guy insisted I take a photo of him by himself instead of with the group.



Different parts of the fort quite clearly date from different eras.


OK, time for some snapshots. I had no guide materials, so I have no idea what I was shooting. But it was architecturally interesting.




If I had a rock band, I'd want to come here and cover the setlist from Pink Floyd's Live at Pompeii at this place. They've already got a laser and light show in the evenings, so it seems like it could probably be arranged.



It was somewhere on my climb up the hill that I encountered a group of guys in their late teens/early 20s who were determined to hang out with me. They didn't speak a word of english, but that didn't stop them from constantly trying to communicate. I was tired and a bit dehydrated and really just wanted to listen to my ipod and hike on my own. My bike was locked up down by the gate and I have no reason to think these guys were even aware of its presence, so it was, apparently, just my white skin that was making me popular. One of the things I like least about India is being a constant center of attention. I don't mind it when I'm riding - mostly cause I'm sort of asking for it by behaving so strangely - but when I'm walking the streets, I'd really just like to be left alone. This is completely impossible here and it makes me want to just hide inside when I'm not out riding. I'm quite the introvert, naturally. I find crowds draining and solitude or small social groups revitalizing, and India is pretty much the opposite of that. I eventually had to resort to just being rude to the 3 young men. And even that didn't really work for quite some time. I finally just stopped hiking until they got bored and moved on.



The view back toward Hyderabad from the highest point I reached on the hill. After doing so much climbing on the bicycle in the earlier part of the day, making my way up the foot high crumbling stairs was just too much for my legs. It was about 1000 degrees with unmitigated exposure to the sun all the way up the hill. I still had several hundred vertical feet to go at this point, but there was a nice shady spot in which to sit for a while and rest.



This shows the kind of 'staircase' we were climbing to get to the top. Hard work, especially wearing metal pedal cleats on the bottom of my shoes. Mountain bike shoes work great on dirt, but India appears to have an abundance of hard rock, so they seem to pave everything in stone, and a steel cleat has basically no traction on that. I had a couple of near falls on my way up and had to be very careful on my way down.



I finally remembered that I could remove my bicycle helmet and look at least a little bit more normal. I had a bystander shoot this.



And because my mom likes it when I smile for photos



There's the stage for my imagined Pink Floyd cover show. You can see the seats set up for the laser show. They're the blue smudge in the middle.



Upon my return to the bike, the usual enthusiastic crowd had gathered.



I figured I should probably get at least one promotional shot for the company that makes the bike. This is the kind of thing they make folding bikes for, though the model I'm using is more of a performance bike and not truly cut out for touring on rough terrain. The 14 spoke front wheel is feeling the pain of this ride. It has so much wobble that the rim uses the entire space between both brake pads as it wobbles to and fro. I can't true it without replacement rim tape because the spoke nipples are, somewhat stupidly, hidden deep inside the rim. I thought hard about buying a spare wheel for this trip, but figured that the 20" rim would give me enough strength. Oops. The front hub has an axle that is mounted on elastomers that give it about 14mm of travel up and back. I figured it would be totally useless but have to admit that it is incredibly effective at absorbing road vibration. I can only imagine that the jolt that has knocked the wheel out of true would have destroyed the rim without it.



The whole crowd wanted in on a picture, too. I must say, I'm glad the security guard made me park my bike. I had tried to carry it in with me, and he allowed it, but then called me back and made me park it. I'm reasonably certain he did it for my own good. Lugging it up the hill would have been brutal and I doubt I'd have gone far. The disadvantage of a bike without a standard triangular frame is that it is pretty awkward to carry.



With the fort tour completed, it was time for my tired legs to carry me back into Hyderabad. There was very little climbing on the way back, thankfully. As I got closer to town, traffic started to get bad and I started to pick up a posse of motorcycles who were definitely escorting me. These 3 stayed with me for at least 5km and we had a long conversation, much of which I couldn't understand. The guy in front is Bangladeshi, middle is from Addis Addaba, and the guy in back is a Hyderabad native. That's about all I retained from the conversation. They were on some kind of low displacement auto-transmission cycle/scooter.



Here's more of my posse. You can see the trio from above a couple of bikes up. Also, note the small child sandwiched between the couple on the right. That is absolutely normal around here (as is 3 or 4 adults on a single bike). Strangely, I also see riders in helmets while their kids have no protection of any kind. I suppose that's economics at work.


This is, by far, my favourite road sign anywhere in the world. If you click on it to see the larger version, you'll see that it is just in front of a very busy intersection. I don't actually think it is intended for the traffic, but it certainly has that effect. Te intersection is also the exit of a military area in town, and I suspect it is the motto of a fighting group stationed nearby. Still, the local drivers have clearly taken it to heart.



My muslim friends just before our paths split.


It turns out that the last 2 miles of my ride back to the guest house are pretty steeply uphill, which is not the happiest way to end a long ride. But I made it home, safe and sound, hopped in the shower, and climbed into bed. Finally, at long last, I managed to get a full night's sleep in one contiguous interval. Unfortunately, it was from 7pm until 2am. But after a week of existing on 3 or 4 hours per night, I'll take what I can get.


Oh, and if you're wondering what I ate that day, the answer is nothing. I had a no-cheese omelette for breakfast and didn't eat until I stopped at a pizza place about a mile from home. Pizza here is interesting. In what is, undeniably, the grossest misuse of ketchup on the planet, Indians seem to universally drown their pizza in ketchup. Some of my coworkers ordered up a pizza hut pizza on friday and they would empty an oversize sachet of ketchup onto each and every slice of a perfectly good vegetarian pizza. Yikes!


Mine was pretty much identical to what I'd get at home, and absolutely hit the spot after a long and hot day in the saddle.