Hyderabad Arrival!

Hello again. Finally I arrived in Hyderabad! (Note: I'm also going to stop telling this story in chronological order. I'm 2 weeks behind and there's no way I'll catch up). (Plus I don't have the discipline to do so. In order to save this blog from a demise similar to the Jubu Surf Blog I will have to make this blog primarily a collection of rambling, non-cohesive, non-planned semi regular posts. It is for it's own good that I must do so). So I got in to the HYD airport around 11 PM on Wednesday night.

Very unexciting picture of the Hyderabad airport stolen from the world wide web:


I was excited to get there finally, because I knew Selin and my driver would be waiting for me!! I got off the plane and waited in a few customs lines, handed a guy my passport, he stamped it, and turned me loose! I walked around the corner and Selin was there! It was great to see her welcoming me to my new country, the seasoned India resident she is. So she waved and gave me a hug, and then introduced me to our driver who was also there waiting. There are several different drivers that we have here in India, and I feel bad but I don't remember which one it was. I think it was Shareef though but I'm not 100% sure. Maybe Selin will know and I'll update this. Sorry Shareef! Whoever it was, he was nice and a good driver, which is necessary here in India as they drive like raging lunatics (at least on first impression. Now that I've been here a while, I realize it is actually a very organized chaos, where everything (REALLY, everything: bikes, people, rickshaws, cows, dogs, cars, trucks, motorcycles, you name it, has it's own place...more on that later). So after seeing I then had to wait for my surfboard to come thru the checked luggage...I brought along the 7'0 Brewer stingerfish which is an awesome board, and a great addition to my luggage -- it's already proven to be quite useful on our last weekend trip to Mammallapuram where I unleashed it on some pristine unspoiled Bay of Bengal juice. I was a little worried about the Brewski not making it for the long and hard voyage, but it turned up eventually -- the last bag out -- I grabbed it, and we were on our way! Not quite so fast, lots of people wondered what I was carrying in the big silver bag, but I just told them and explained and they were cool with it. Don't think they see surfboards very often in Hyderabad though. Maybe never! But we made it. We loaded the board into the car and were off.

Maybe 30 minutes later got home to the guest house I'll be living in. It's pretty nice! I'll take pictures and put em up here some time soon. So I checked it out and settled in, got unpacked, and it was bedtime...it had been a long trip! And I was going to work that very next morning...Google doesn't play around.

Here is a picture of Hyderabad on the map for y'all, and also some more Hyderabad information courtesy of wikipedia.