Hyderabad 5

A quick final post from Hyderabad. It's hard to believe we've been in India over a month and on the road since the beginning of November. Even harder to believe we're less than a third of our way into the trip. Southern India has been incredible. There's no way to accurately describe this country that would evoke anything close to the true feeling of being here. As drastically different as Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Singapore have been from anywhere either of us has been, I've felt that I could at least wrap my head around the experiences there. The intensity of just about everything here is dialed up - the colors, the flavors, the population, the movies, the traffic, the dust... People here are eager to ask what I think of India now that I've spent a bit of time here, and aside from a big grin and a shrug (and an attempt at a good-natured look to try to convey the unfairness of the question), I've been at loss to provide a concise answer. I'll usually say "wonderful", but mean it quite literally (wonder-full). It was a real treat to have Will here - not only because of how welcome it was to have a face from home after being gone for so long, but it was great to get a glimpse of the country again through fresh eyes. It's comforting to now know that behind the unrelenting stares that our obvious other-ness draws, there is an eager friendliness that quickly bubbles up once you actually talk to people. I think this functions as a good analogy for the country as a whole as I can think of - at least from the limited view of a visitor.

After seeing Will off to the airport yesterday morning (good luck, Will!), we enjoyed a rather lazy day around grandma's house - reading, napping, eating (and eating and eating...my saving grace being a local gym run by a friendly ex-bodybuilder that I've spent some downtime at). Yesterday was a bit more active. It was the national holiday, Sankranthi, which was described to me as a traditional harvest festival and also akin to American Thanksgiving (although it seems every time I've sat at a dining room table here has evoked a Thanksgiving-like atmosphere). The most noticeable elements of the holiday have been the colorful, geometric chalk drawings that have appeared on most driveways and the incredible number of identically built, multicolored diamond shaped kites that can be seen peppering the skies over Hyderabad, flown by small hands from countless concrete rooftops. Also, everything is closed. Cindhu, her dad, and I took a car to visit the house of the one Aunt and Uncle set (Padma pedamma and Vasudev pedananna) that I had yet to meet, along with the cousis (Krishna and Shalini) and corresponding families. I experienced the same warm, wonderful welcome that I've become happily used to since we've been in Hyderabad, complete with the compulsory Thanksgiving-like lunch spread of delicious biryani, chilli-fried potatoes, raita, and so on. I'm going to miss all this wonderful time with family.

 We've become all too familiar with the repeated bittersweet feeling of wishing we had more time each place once we're on the eve of leaving. Tomorrow night we fly up to New Delhi for a day or so before our brief visit to Nepal and our tour of Rajastan (if we can actually get the required approval to returen to India - more on that later). Still hard to wrap my head around having so much ahead of us - Cairo, Turkey, Croatia, Eastern Europe (possibly with my parents??), Germany, Italy, France, Spain and so on. We've signed up for WWOOF Italy and are already crafting daydreams of pruning grape vines in Tuscany. I really can't thank everyone who helped make this trip happen enough.