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Friday 14 June 2013

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....