Maps

A post or two ago I was struck that I don't know where anything is in Hyderabad, let alone even where I live! Decided to do something about that and looked at a map.
Here's one that was OK. Circled in red on the upper left hand side is our little section of the city, which I now know is called CYBERABAD. Cool huh? CYBORGABAD. In the far upper left of the circled section is a rough estimate of where our office (and us) resides. So, as you can see, we're on the outskirts of Hyderabad. The main city is focused around that large lake in the center. Some of the neighborhoods we hang out in are Madhapur, Jubilee Hills (where the Tollywood stars live!), and Banjara Hills. Traffic is terrible, so even though some other places aren't technically that far away distance wise, they take forever to get to.

Inspired by this map effort, I decided to do another, showing where travels have taken us so far...

Pretty rudimentary effort, but it gives you an idea. We've been sticking with South India mostly, train, plane, and taxi. :) Future plans are for even more exotic locales -- Sri Lanka, Maldives, Thailand, Andaman Islands, Mt. Everest? Fun stuff, there are so many possibilities. On the map above, "Mahabs" is Mahabalipuram/Mamallapuram. The locals call it Mahabs and since we've been there so many times, we're locals too, might as well act the part. And it was a lot shorter to try and scribble than MAHABALIPURAM/MAMALLAPURAM. (lots of cities in India have two names now. They recently have been changing cities names from the British given names back to the traditional Indian names, but interestingly, people are slow to adjust, and still call them by the old British names. Makes things a bit confusing, but you figure it out quickly enough.)