Trip to Hyderabad

October 8, 2007
Muni and I were to leave by train from Bombay to Hyderabad today. The train was at 9:50p.m We had decided to leave our place at 7:30 and thought that should be good enough time to reach the station. It was 8:15, and Muni had not yet come home, and I was busy chasing a pigeon out of the house!
Anyway, we ran out of the house at 8:40, left the pigeon to stay on, as I just could not get him out in spite of everything I tried. We took that much time to leave, coz Mr. Muni had not packed. And the boy packs everything he possibly can; towel, bed sheet, clothes, extra clothes, reserve clothes!!
We left the house running and ran all the way to the auto stand. Took an auto to Andheri station. Looked at the queue there for tickets, smiled at each other and just continued running. We both knew that if we get caught for travelling without tickets today, we’ll just tip the cop and move on, coz there was not a second to waste.
Reached the platform, and just as we got there, a fast train to Dadar arrived. We jumped in. managed to find seats as we were going against the Junta coming from town. Waited anxiously till we reached Dadar. Neither of us said a word. On reaching Dadar, we ran to the platform of the Central Line. Waited for the train to come and jumped into the one going to CST. The time was 9:30. We heard that the train would take 20 minutes to reach CST. We were cutting it close. Real close!
We waited. But this time we spoke. We knew there is no point in continuing to be tense. We did what we could and now it’s all in the hands of the Indian Railways!
We reached CST at 9:50 sharp. We jumped off the train even before it came to a complete halt and just ran to the section of external trains. We managed to spot our train number, and I continued running to find out which compartment we were in. Muni just stopped and said not to worry coz we’ve managed to catch the train, and he goes to buy magazines and water. I just couldn’t believe the guy. After all that running around, I just wanted to get into the train and sit peacefully, and this guy goes for entertainment. But before I could say anything, the train began to move, and I just hopped into the compartment closest to me. Muni joined me shortly after making his purchases, and we waded our way through the demography to reach our seats. Politely asked the gentlemen who had occupied it to please get their asses off, and we both sat down there. I made a few phone calls that I left to call only once I’m in the train, and then went to my berth on top with a magazine in my hand. Read about half a para of a half page article, and I was fast asleep. Only time I woke up was when Muni asked me for my DL as the TT had come there. Apart from that, I slept in the best possible manner a person can sleep without a pillow and quilt in a rollicking train..

October 9, 2007
We were supposed to reach Hyderabad at 12 noon. At about 11:45, I was telling Muni that we should begin getting ready, and he tells me that we just reached Gulbarga. Now my geography is quite bad and I didn’t know how far Gulbarga was from Hyderabad.. So I continued to pack up and Muni says that we were supposed to reach Gulbarga at 9a.m itself, and the train is running nearly 3 hours late. It was then that we learnt, after talking to some fellow passengers, that the train had stalled for close to 3 hours in the night because of some engine failure and it had to be corrected. Muni and I were completely oblivious to that whole incident. Anyway, we had to wait 3 hours longer to get to Hyderabad now. Bala kept calling and asking where we were. He had reached by 12 itself. Actually an hour later than he was expected to, but all the same, way earlier than us. He was catching up with Gopal with some Teachers and was waiting for us to give him company. Finally, Muni and I made it to Gop’s house by 4. We knew we barely had much time to go anywhere out now. But we decided to go some place close by any case, and just had some whisky to relax after the journey. But Teachers is no ordinary whisky (I’m yet to drink a kind of whisky that is ‘ordinary’) and soon, all of us were pretty tipsy, and Bala, true to his style, was too lazy to go out anywhere. He went and changed and got all ready to pop it. So we just ordered some food home and continued with our boozing.
It was pretty funny; the only thing that changed was the location. Bombay to Hyderabad. That apart, the 3 of us were doing the exact same thing. Drinking whisky, having a conversation tipping on the edge of an argument, and socializing with a bunch of friends!
Anyway, it was our first day in Hyderabad, and we may not have gone out anywhere, but at least we caught up with Gopal and life in Hyderabad.

October 10, 2007
Anjali had called me the previous day and even mailed me saying we have something to do for SCM project. So I woke up early and just when I was about to sit for the project, Bala, as full of surprises he is always, tells me that he already finished making the slides that Anjali had asked us to. I was so pleased to know that I don’t have any work to do on it now, and given the sudden amount of free time at my disposal, decided to go on a jog and check out Hyderabad. Something I wanted to do yesterday itself but couldn’t because of lazy roommates!
Well, took a nice long jog. Saw NIFT and some office campuses around Gopals house. Had a good time and got back home and got ready. Soon, Bala also got ready and the two of us decided to go and have breakfast. We took a short walk and didn’t find any decent restaurant. The only one that we found seemed like a 5-star, and they had buffet breakfast for Rs 99. It was certainly above what we would have liked to spend for ‘breakfast’, but on checking out what was available, we decided to fill our stomachs there itself, especially considering how hungry we were. So between the two of us, we had an omlette, dosa, vada, semia, pancakes, salami, sausages, mango milkshake, doughnuts.. The list was endless!
We got back home, completely satiated and waited for Gopal and Muni to get ready. Once they were through, the 4 of us went on 2 Bullets to check out Hyderabad. This was the start of what was going to be an awesome bike journey for the four of us..

First we went to Salar Jung Museum. We got there by 12, and decided not to spend too much time there. But by the time we completed about half the museum, it was close to 3. Way beyond schedule and not even through with the museum! But we decided to get out of there, lest we miss lunch and got to a hotel which the Museum guard recommended. Just about managed to catch lunch there and it was awesome! The waiter had actually told us that lunch was over when we got there, but somehow squeezed us in. We were really grateful to him, for not only giving us food, but also serving some typical Hyderabadi food, which was one of our main purposes of visit here. After stuffing ourselves, we went to Charminar.
This was a place I’d been to long time ago. I barely remembered the place, but it was really nice seeing it. Spent some time there. Walked up the small staircase to the top and caught the brilliant view. It was especially spectacular because of all the Muslim people there in lieu of Ramzan.

We got chatting with the guard on top of Charminar who realized we were Bangaloreans and began talking to us in Kannada. He told us a lot about the history and the culture there, then even told us the shortest way to get to Golconda, which was our next stop.
There was a ‘Sound and Light’ show at Golconda, scheduled to begin at 7p.m. We got there in time, but had no clue what was in store for us. When the show actually began, we were completely taken aback. It was one of the most brilliant concepts I’ve seen. The show itself may not have been great in content, but the concept behind it was something none of us had ever seen before.

After the show at Golconda, we took some photos around and then decided to ride back home. Now this was the highlight of the entire bike trip!
We had covered everything we had seen for the day and were pretty tired. All we wanted to do was get home. But Gop decides to take a route he had no clue about, following the directions given by some guy in Telugu, a language none of us understand very well. We started riding, and in some time, landed up in a paddy field – in the middle of absolutely nowhere!

I was riding the bike at this point of time, and the roads were so bad, that Muni wasn’t giving me the Helmet to wear. He was so scared of the roads that he had it on most of the time. Of course, when the insects started getting into my eyes and mouth, I had not alternative but to pry the Helmet away from the Monster.
After lots of twists and turns, numerous dead ends, rollicking terrains, and asking directions from so many people and communicating with them mostly in sign language, we finally managed to reach a ‘main road’. Now all we had to do was figure if we had to go left or right to reach our place and keep driving.
I was totally famished by this time. Hands all ached maneuvering that big bike. We finally hit a pub that was close to Gop’s place, had some beer there and then went to a nice hotel for dinner. I was dozing off at the hotel in between my food – was that tired!
We soon got back home, and I crashed out.

October 11, 2007
Gopal had to go to office today and asked us to meet him there at 12 noon so that he could show us around. We were so tired from the previous day and feeling so lazy, that by the time we reached Microsoft office, it was nearly 1.
Anyway, Gop showed us the place and we were totally floored.

Bal kept saying it resembles a lot of Infy in Bangalore, but I’ve never seen Infy and never seen a campus like this before. Synthetic Basket ball courts, tennis courts, an amphi theatre, Barista and Frankie outlets… and this is just the outside. inside, it’s another story. Microsoft has a tie up with Coca-Cola, so all there vending machines are from Coke. That not only means having soft drinks like Coke and Fanta, but also getting to have Georgia coffee! This is nothing. The highlight is a small place right next to the vending machines – the Xbox 360 Console!! We just sat in front of it with out coffee\coke and Bala tried fidgeting with the system. Of course, we couldn’t get the hang of playing most of the games, so we decided to chuck that. some of the other interesting things inside the MS office were pool tables, a huge huge canteen, large screens for watching matches and stuff – the whole place was just brilliant!

After this, we went to ISB. Muni knew someone working there, and he arranged for an ISB tour for us. We were lucky that the students had a term break, so the whole place was completely free for our ‘tour’. This really friendly lady showed us the entire place and at the end of it, I came to 2 conclusions – one was, I should not have left an IT job after seeing MS, and second was, I should have considered ISB while thinking of doing my MBA!
Anyway, not having the time to feel guilty for too long, we rushed back to Gop’s place, took our stuff, went to the train station and travelled to the main train station of Hyderabad from where we were to catch our train to Bangalore. Just before this, we went to a place near the Husain Sagar Lake called Eat Street and grabbed some food. Really nice place this was. Something like Bandstand of Bombay – place for all the couples of Hyderabad. I think Bangalore is the only place that doesn’t have something like this!

Anyway, it was where we were headed, and no matter how badly the place sucks, it is where home is, so can’t really complain..