4 weeks in India, my conclusion

4 weeks in India, that sounds long. But it wasn´t at all and the farewell was very difficult for me, most of all from my friends of course.
I´m still missing the colours, the smell and sounds, the crowded streets and the food! Oh how I miss the food!!

The stay was full packed with various impressions. Fascinating, exciting, breath taking, beautiful, overwhelming.
I actually had no bad experiences, apart from the Hyderabad trip, which was a bit disappointing.

I never felt unsafe or have been in any dangerous situation. I guess being always accompanied by indians was quite helpful and maybe also my height was, I´m 6  feet tall. ;)
People have always been nice and kind to me, most of all curious but never really importunate.

My biggest concern was the heat. I´m not a summer person at all and 25° C are absolutely enough for me. So how should I survive the tropical heat in south India then?????
Well, somehow I did. I guess after a while I got simply used to be fully drenched already at 11 am. And I wasn´t alone with that problem. ;)

I already told you about my primary experiences in my reports. Now I will just give you some more facts and practical advices.

In total I travelled around 4100 km (2548 miles)

• Thereof 2280 km by bus and 1800 km by train. 
• My travel expenses in India added up to 600,- Euro. It´s absolutely possible to travel significantly more favourable but for me at least the accomodation should have some good standards and comfort. So I ended up between 800 & 1200 Rupees (10 - 15 Euro) per night.
• The most expensive food (Mutton fry & fried rice with various meat) was 560 Rupees (7,30 Eur)  for 2 people, 2 bottles of water included. That was in Bangalore.
• The most favorable food must

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Aloo Gobi Ki Sabji (Potato, Cauliflower dry Curry)

A week without indian food? Impossible for me. ;)
But what to cook then? Chicken again? 
Well, I love chicken but somehow I needed something else. And it doesn´t have to be meat always. 
So I choosed something veggie. I´m a veggie lover too and eat almost everything. 
When I went for shopping I saw this cute small caulifower and so the decision was taken. It will be Aloo Gobi, it´s quite a while that I had that dish. 
It´s one of the most famous indian meals and easy to make. Wanna try it?

Ingredients:

• 1 small cauliflower
• 1 medium potato
• 1 small onion
• 2 medium tomatoes
• 2 tsp ginger garlic paste
• Handful of chopped Coriander leaves
• 2 tsp Garam Masala
• Turmeric
• 1 tsp Jeera powder (dried cumin)
• 1 tsp Dhaniya powder (coriander)
• Red Chilli powder as per taste (I used 2 to 3 tsp)
• Jeera (cumin) seeds
• Mustard seeds
• Oil
• Salt to taste

First steps:

• Cut the cauliflower

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Gel nails - 12 steps to nail art design

 In the last couple of months I´ve always been asked the following questions:

"Are that your nails?" and "How does this work?" 

Well, here are the answers:

Yes, they are my nails and no tips (fake plastic nails) anymore.

We thought we should show you the single steps but first SunShine wants to tell something about it too:

Hello all you lovely people :) 

Since more than 1 year I do my and also Honey´s nails. Before that I always went to a nail art designer until she got pregnant and had to pause. I didn´t found a proper alternative and decided to do it on my own. I never took classes for it or a training. 

You need a lot of practice and patience for it, so don´t give up when it doesn´t look perfect right from the beginning. 

But please pay attention to work in a hygenic and neat way!! 

And here now the instructions:

1. At the beginning, you should check whether you have all the necessary utensils, these are: UV lamp, task light, UV gel, brushes, cellulose pads, files, buffers, cleaners, nail oil and possibly nail art, eg Rhinestones, glitter powder and UV finishing gel for the optimal completion.

2. The next step is to remove the old gel with a file and removing the cuticles with a cuticle remover. It´s not that you really remove the visible cuticles, it´s the invisible ones that are on the nail!!  Then gently push the cuticles with a manicure stick back, so that the nail can be easily sculptured.

3. Disinfect with nail cleaner

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Hyderabad - Never rely on someone else... India- part 5

The last destination should have been Hyderabad then.
Expectations were high of course. Golconda fort...Charminar....
And it was high time to meet Lidia again after 3 weeks, since she was staying in Hyderabad all the time... So I was really looking forward to that trip.

Again we organised bus tickets to Hyderabad and left on a friday evening. The bus was early again and just dropped us to another bus stop. There it looked like each and every travel agency has their office there and hundreds of busses were trying to find a parking lot, to turn around and to get all their passengers inside the busses.
It was so crowded and busy.. it was more interesting than watching a movie. At least for me.
We got seats infront of bus company.

Parveen Travels 

And we had to wait. At least  for about 1 and a half hours I guess. But it wasn´t boring at all.
As I mentioned before, it was so busy there, people running around, the bus drivers were trying to reverse, others were trying to help them.. shouting at other bus drivers and so on.

Of course I was also an attraction for some people there and so time was almost flying. The only disturbing thing was the "bubbles-man". He was running around and selling.. guess? Right.. Bubbles.
Ok.. his right of course. But listening to him for more than one hour was a bit tiring: "Bubbles....bubbles....bubbles...bubbles...!!"

But finally the wait was over and a little boy was escorting us to our bus. 10 minutes walk away.
It was around 9.30 pm when we left that bus station just to stop after 1 km at a corner to load some washing machine and fridges.. I guess I also saw some furniture for bathrooms. Everything was stored into the luggage hold on the side, there must have been enough space because Indians love to take their baggage into the bus itself. ;)
Anyways.. we here in Germany use forwarders for transports like this one.. but.. this is India. :D

Everything into the bus....

But no hurry please.. ;)

Finally... 

I still remember when Shree said: "Don´t worry.. the journey will be pleasent. It´s almost only Highway to Hyd."  Hahaha.. well, I wasn´t worried at all. Why should I? Every journey we made went smooth and easy, I was used to the long bus trips already. But I had to laugh when I woke up in the middle of the night. The bus driver was using the horn and almost full breaking. I looked out of the window and only saw fields around ... Highway?  I see. Indian Highway. Or a shortcut? ;)

We reached Hyderabad at 7.50 am. At one of the first stops a young student left the bus. His parents were already waiting for him with a cart and then the unloading took place. They were pretty happy to see washing machine. :)
When we left the bus it was pretty cool. After almost 4 weeks in India even I started to feel cold at 12 degrees...
After a few calls to our contact there and a conversation with an auto wallah, he took us to a place where we should get picked up from.

This must have been the oldest and slowest auto in whole India.... 8 km in it.. and it was never ending. When there was a hill we almost stopped.. Sometimes I thought I should offer my help to push it a little. :P
Our mood wasn´t the best, Shree was a bit ill and had almost no voice after the Kerala trip plus we were both tired.

view from our balcony

At the meeting point we called Lidia´s friend again and she was talking in the slowest english to me ever. It was like: "Driveeeeeeeeer wiiiiiilllll coooooooooome iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin 5 minutes. Caaaaaaaaar has reeeeeed colouuuuuuuuuuuuur."
I guess she didn´t expect me to talk and understand proper english.  Anyways... we got picked up from a driver and he dropped us to a service apartment in Jubilee Hills where we stayed for one night only since we already had booked our return tickets for sunday evening.
We fixed a time with Lidia and her friends to pick us up and used the time for taking a small nap and to freshen up.

It was nice to meet Lidia then again and her friends. They took us to an indo-chinese restaurant for lunch first. Well, I wasn´t to happy with the food. The restaurant was a bit up market which was a nice experience too but I didn´t like the food. :(
Nevertheless I don´t complain. We had a good time with Lidia´s friends, made plans for the next day and then they dropped us at Shilparam, an arts and crafts village. For more information click here.  Entrance fee was 40 rupees and then we were strolling around.



It was quite nice there although of course it was a tourist spot and all the sellers were running behind us. I was interested in some bags and that guy offered them for 500 rupees. But I acted like I wasn´t interested anymore and left his shop.

Each time when he saw me from far then, he called for me and offered a lower price. I was laughing already and told him for 200 rupees I would take them. He didn´t agree and asked for 350 rupees. I denied.
After the a couple of shops I was around 50 away and again he called me. "Madaaaam, madaaaaam... 200..."
I was laughing and he had to giggle too and so I went to his shop again and bought some bags.
He was like: "You´re my first customer today and so I wanted to sell you something."
haha.. lucky me.

We spent around  2 and a half hours there before we left and returned to our apartment and another 30 minutes later Lidia got picked up.
Shree and me had a nice dinner and luckily I was able to meet another friend whom I met online 2 years ago.
Vrinda was able to drop in for half an hour and it was really nice to meet her in person. :)

Next morning it was said that we get picked up around 9.30 am.
Well.. from then on the day was spoilt. I don´t want to blame anyone, but why to offer something to me and making promises but not keeping it?? All I can say is.. we should have planned everything on our own as we did always before.

This way we wasted a lot of time.. waiting for someone who didn´t show up, even after many phone calls and attempts to figure out something else. We were disappointed and I wasn´t in mood for any solution anymore.
So we checked out at around 12:30 pm and were looking for an auto then, which at least would take us to Golkonda Fort which was the closest to us.
We had to walk quite a while since all the auto wallahs were asking for horrific prices and that didn´t cheer our moods at all.
But finally we found one decent guy who offered us to go on meter. He would take us to Golkonda Fort for a while and then drop us to our bus station which was around 15 to 20 km away.

At Golkonda Fort the queue for the tickets were sooooo long, we would have waited for at least 1 hour and you need to spend some time inside too. But so much time we hadn´t left.
That´s why  I was just able to take some pictures from outside ..

Golkonda Fort 

Entrance queue 

Outside were some small shops and I took the opportunity to buy a few more souvenirs then. I needed something to cheer my mood. ;) I´m just a woman and shopping always helps.. right?

I would have loved to go to the Charminar but it was too far away in the opposite direction and the auto wallah said that there is too much traffic because it was also a holiday.
Since we had no idea how far our bus stop is away, how much traffic there will be and how easliy we will find our point of departure.. we left the Fort and the auto wallah took us to the bus stop.

street market 

It was quite a distance as I mentioned before but traffic was less in that direction and so we reached within 45 minutes or so. We had to search there a bit but finally we found the right place.
Unfortunetaly it wasn´t a shopping area or something like that. Just a few stores and restaurants... that´s it.
At least we had lunch there and then we had to wait for around 4 hours. Yes.. 4! Well almost 5 because the bus was delayed....
So you can imagine our mood. We were both a bit pissed off and Shree was blaming himself for all this, which wasn´t his fault at all. . .. and I want to appologise to Shree again for my bad moods there. ;)
Sorry ji! :)

But well... why to complain? There will be a next time and a proper plan from our side ;)
Nevertheless we were happy when the bus finally arrived and we could go back to good old Chennai....

View from our bus stop

busy kid.. first cleaning the dishes... 

and then cutting onions.. :) faster than any chef. 

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Purple, the last attempt?

Definitely not. Well, at least not for me. 

There have been said many things about this colour. It´s the colour of the unsatisfied woman and of absistence. 
A too intense violett can lead to melancholy. Well, in my case I can´t second anything of that.  

In any case it´s the colour of women. Most of all in the 70´s it was very popular and standing for self-confidence, independence and self-determination.
And that all matches me well ;) 

used products:  

-Primer Soft-Nail-Expert
-Bonding gel-Jolifin Studioline
-Multiglitter from Jet Set
-Selex Gel thick from Jolifin
-Cleaner -Nail-Expert
-Stamping paint white - Nail-Expert
-Stamping pattern from Konad 
-High gloss sealing from Jolifin


Your SunShine 

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