[Hyderabad, May 2025] Day 6....7... Who even knows. The Return Trip.

 10:00PM, ITC Kohenur, Hyderabad, India Standard Time, 0 Hour.

I'm in a hotel-arranged private car, weaving through the Thursday evening traffic of Hyderabad and praying that the driver has a strong enough sense of self-preservation not to steer us into oncoming traffic. My bags are in the back. I am unhealthily checking my travel app every 20-30 seconds to ensure that my flight is on time.

10:40PM, Hyderabad Airport Exterior, India Standard Time, 0+40 minutes.

We arrive at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport. Even this late, there are many, many people outside. I get confused because there are several ticket counters out here on the pavement, and indeed, there are signs that point to them and proclaim so. They, however, are not the ticket counters I need. They are local airlines that don't get space inside. I finally realize I need to be in the airport proper, so I ignore the signs and head to the first security clearance point, where I show a printed QR code to an armed officer who scans it and waves me through. I wonder what would have happened if I had neglected to bring that printed code with me? Would this journey home have been over before it started? It is speculation. I get into the 'true' airport with no issues.

Inside is an endless liminal space of ticket counters. There are far fewer people in here. I wonder to myself what the majority of the folks out in front of the airport are even doing if they're not coming in here. The counters have no clear order to what airline is located where -- they are not arranged alphabetically, by region, or by any other sane organizational methodology, as far as I can tell. I go all the way to one side of the large atrium, and then all the way to the other before finding the Lufthansa desks. They take my roller bag away, and I cross my fingers that I will see it again someday.

There is no indication of what I am supposed to do next, no sign pointing me to the gates or passport clearance. I turn in place, baffled, like that John Travolta meme. I eventually find a security desk and am pointed through to another security checkpoint that does, in time, get me to the international gates. It is a vast space speckled with American-brand restaurants like Starbucks and KFC. The KFC proudly flaunts a "Southern Indian Chicken Sandwich" featuring a massive deep-fried chunk of paneer cheese. I contemplate how disastrous it would be to eat such a thing before a 10-hour-long flight.

I am at my gate 3.5 hours early, despite the airport confusion. My flight has been delayed.

3:00AM, India Standard Time, Hyderabad Airport, International Terminal, 0+5 hours, or close enough.

It is boarding time, or it would be if the plane weren't an hour late. I am suddenly frustrated with the US insistence on continuing to use imperial measurement. I confidently told someone at the office yesterday that Sacramento gets up to about 50 degrees in the summer. That's 122°F for the folks at home. It does not get that hot, as Sacramento is not located in Death Valley. I am also frustrated by the realization that it would be a miracle if I made my connection in Frankfurt to the flight to Vancouver.

4:00AM,  India Standard Time, Lufthansa Flight LH something-or-other, 0+6 hours.

I am on the plane. I hold onto some small hope that we can make up some time in the air.  I'll have about half an hour to get to my next flight when we arrive in Frankfurt, otherwise. The flight to Germany is 9 hours and threads the needle between Iran and Saudi Arabia above the Persian Gulf. We fly directly over Iraq. I remember the two Gulf Wars and wonder what it must have been like for airlines that needed to use that airspace in wartime. I can only assume flights were even longer, trying to avoid the conflict zones. I attempt to sleep and eek out a few hours. The seats in premium plus are really quite good, with reclining foot rests and easily accessed power outlets. I sleep through the first meal service; I am awake for the second. It is some sort of egg-adjacent block of protein, and it is not very good.

10:00AM, Frankfurt Airport, "A" Gates, Germany, Central European Summer Time, 0+15 hours.

We arrive at the "gate" in Frankfurt, which is an airplane parking space a good distance from the actual terminal. I have 45 minutes to get to my connection, but we must take a seven-minute meandering bus ride to reach the airport. 38 minutes remain when we reach the "A" Gates and the bus vomits us into the terminal. I receive a notification on my phone that boarding has begun for my connection. I choose to run, as best as my not-very-aerobically-inclined body will permit. I make a few wrong turns because Frankfurt Airport has unacceptable signage, and my levels of frustration reach the "swearing aloud" threshold. I must stop at a security checkpoint just before the "B" gates, my destination. The very unhurried security personnel decide that the amount of technology in my backpack is worthy of a thorough bag check. I silently and grumpily comply. The chance of reaching my connection dwindles.

I reach my gate, gasping for breath, and the gate attendant informs me that the airplane doors are secured. I can see my plane, but I cannot reach it. I crumple. The gate attendant says I must visit the Lufthansa Service Desk for a new connection, which, of course, is located in the "A" Gates, almost precisely where I entered the terminal to begin with. I smirk at the irony. Then, I do some more swearing, though not in the presence of the gate attendant; that would be rude.

Upon arrival at the service desk, I am assisted by a young German man who deals with this sort of thing all day. He is friendly enough. I tell him my final destination is Sacramento, not Vancouver, so whatever gets me there is the real desire. He asks me if I have the ability to travel through the US. I inform him that I am a US citizen. He realizes that Sacramento is in the US, not Canada. I make an obvious mental note that not everyone knows where individual cities are located in North America, and that when I'm travelling abroad, I shouldn't assume things like that. He gets me on a flight to San Francisco and on a connection to Sacramento immediately following, while leaving me ample time to get through customs and immigration in SF. He says that I am lucky, and that the seat on the flight to SF was the last seat on the plane. I do feel lucky. I also feel very tired, and my journey is not even halfway done. I head to the "Z" gates, where my United flight to SF will depart in two hours.

I go through the same security gates a second time on my way to my debarkation gate. I get a little sticker added to the back of my passport by a Scottish Lufthansa employee at the entry to the "US Flights" section of the terminal, confirming that my passport isn't fraudulent or expired or some such thing. I pray there is a bar in the Z gates, as I could use a nice, cold, gin-based reinforcement.  Since time has no meaning to me at this point, I don't feel guilty about doing so at 10:30AM. 

This is the only picture I thought
to take on this entire return journey

There is no bar in the Z gates.

There is, however, a pretzel and beer stall, spouting awful traditional oompah music that I'm absolutely positive no modern German would have any interest in whatsoever. I sit on a small cubical chair and I enjoy a nice draft German lager that tastes better than any beer I can remember having in a long while, not due to its actual flavor, but due to the cool liquid break it gives me from this harrowing journey. I do not have a pretzel.

1:30PM, Central European Summer Time, Frankfurt Airport "Z" Gates, 0 + 18 hours, 30 minutes.

I lament that I am in basic economy for the longest of my flights, despite the fact that I had already paid more for economy plus on my missed connection to Vancouver. However, I was inching towards home, so I do not complain. There are also several empty seats on the plane. There are so many, in fact, that I have two empty seats next to me, and thus can stretch out languidly. I would be more comfortable than I would have been in Premium Plus. Ha! Stupid Premium Plus rubes, I think to myself. I am slightly delirious at this point and spend several minutes, possibly as much as an hour, glaring into empty space with my mouth slightly ajar. I try to sleep, but cannot get comfortable, even with the extra space. Instead, I watch Wicked on the little screen on the seat back before me, but I am particularly impressed by it. At some point, they serve dinner and I have the chicken entree. It is coq au vin, and it's pretty damn good. I cannot recall how I spent the rest of this 11-hour flight. I don't want to remember.

4:30PM, Pacific Daylight Time, San Francisco International Airport, 0 + 29 hours, 30 minutes.

We arrive in San Francisco with little fanfare. I stumble through customs and immigration with no problems, but there are two and a half hours before my connection to Sacramento. I make my way to the gate to ensure I know where it is and then look for the nearest place that serves drinks to resolve the long-kept desire for a martini I've been harbouring since Frankfurt. I find a golf-themed cafe and lounge called Farley's, which has a tiny bar attached to it. They have Hendricks. I am at peace. I drink my martini and finish writing the previous blog entry.

6:40PM, Pacific Daylight Time, San Francisco International "F" Gates, 0 + 31 hours, 40 minutes.

I board the tiny airplane from San Francisco to Sacramento. If I were to drive this leg, it would take me about 2 hours. I absorb the embarrassment of burning jet fuel to do the trip via plane. We take off, and literally five minutes after reaching 10k feet, the pilot announces our descent into Sacramento Airport.

7:20PM, Pacific Daylight Time, Sacramento International Airport, 0 + 32 hours, 20 minutes.

We arrive. I pick up my roller bag gate-side and order a rideshare to get home. The remainder of the trip down the interstate and to my home is made in blessed silence. I am greeted by a loving husband and an ebullient dog. We watch the second episode of Amazon Prime Murderbot Diaries show. I fall asleep on the couch. I am home.

Epilogue, the following afternoon.

Heeey, and that was it! 32 hours, 40 minutes from door to door. Last night I slept about ten hours and am currently taking it easy to mitigate the inevitable jet lag. My first tentative dip into experiencing India is complete, and despite the fact that I didn't get to experience *much* of it, what I did left an overall positive impression. The city itself was undoubtedly one of contrasts. The food was universally excellent, despite the fact that the same five or so ingredients played a part in nearly everything. The people were warm and welcoming and challenged my assumptions at almost every turn. Even though the trip to and from the sub-continent from North America is undeniably brutal -- the most challenging I have had to endure -- I thoroughly enjoyed myself and look forward to being there again, which is likely to happen in relatively short order.

Thanks for reading, as always. My husband and I plan to travel next year if the US's relationship with literally the entire rest of the world doesn't degrade further, so check in occasionally! Until next time. Namaste!

[Hyderabad, May 2025] Day 5 - Braaaainz & Goodbyes

 The last day of this short whirlwind of a trip is upon me, and while I wish I had been able to see much of anything in this exciting and rapidly expanding city, I am also looking forward to going home. I am *not*, on the other hand, looking forward to the process of getting home. I typically write these blog entries about a day behind my actual experiences, so some of the next day has already occurred. As a prelude to the final entry about the return journey tomorrow, let me just say: it doesn't go all that smoothly. But that'll make reading about it much more interesting now, won't it? My suffering can be your succor.

I promised you yesterday that I managed to top my adventurous breakfast experience, the lamb trotter stew. So, I am entering a new top entry in my brave eating experiences on this trip: Bheja Fry. It already sounds a little sinister, doesn't it? 

Once again, baby animal lovers, go ahead and skip the next three paragraphs. Lamb is the most common red meat consumed in Southern India, though some communities eat buffalo, pork, and goat. Even beef is consumed by Hindus in very specific circumstances and regional traditions, though I certainly never ran into any on this trip. Despite having the lamb trotters the day before, I was still shocked when I discovered the tureen of fried lambs' brains in a masala sauce that is Hyderabad's version of this originally Muslim dish on the hotel's breakfast buffet. It's certainly not something I would expect most Westerners to throw down on. 

That little bit at the top is the brain chunk

Now, this is not the first time I've had brains (yeah, yeah, laugh it up). It's a standard filling for Mexican street tacos, and man, do I love a street taco. Brain tissue is more or less all cholesterol and is not generally something you want to make a habit of eating. Cow's brain, which is the most common type served in those street tacos, can also be a carrier for all kinds of nasties, including mad cow disease. Risky consumption is a central theme of this trip, and really one of the very few things I am prepared to take risks on in my life. (I should unpack that with a therapist at some point...) Remember the ginger bug homemade soda from a few days ago? I'm pretty sure that it was made with municipal water, which I was told not to consume due to the significant differences in the bacteria present in it compared to the bacteria my gut is used to in the US. The hotel even has a private bulk filtration system for the water it serves in the rooms and restaurants. And regarding the ginger bug, I didn't want to offend the new colleague who lovingly served it to me; he was very excited to be sharing it! I was on this trip as an ambassador from my team to theirs, after all, so I risked an immodium-filled evening (which blessedly never came to pass.)

Oh, we were talking about eating brains. Since they were fried, they had a slightly crisp exterior and the familiar creamy, fatty interior. It's a weekday Hyderabadi breakfast because it is 'healthy' and 'doesn't take much prep work', according to an internet recipe I found for it. Alongside a little bit of the bheja, I had a hearty Turkish poached egg, which was served over raita with red pepper oil. I closed out the breakfast with one last Iranian chai and some little pastries, including a lovely dragonfruit, kiwi, and custard number that was excellent. When I return to Hyderabad, I'll seek out this hotel and this buffet again, as it was a joy to stay here. The room was spacious and beautiful, every restaurant was great, the service was top-notch, and there was that breakfast buffet.

Walking through Knowledge City Business Park to lunch

My last day in the office wasn't quite so packed as the previous one, but busy nonetheless, and the most enjoyable bit was lunch! Yes, yes. More food. I went out with the project management team and finally got an opportunity to wander around the business park a bit. They took me to a "Progressive Indian" restaurant called Tevar, which specializes in modern and experimental takes on traditional dishes and plays American 'classics' like Johnny Cash and Hank Williams on repeat. 

Making Patta Chaat with dry ice frozen yogurt

My colleagues insisted on ordering everything for the table, which I was happy to let them do. They also urged me to have a cocktail, apparently getting my number early on. The quite pretty cocktail was called a 'Valley of Flowers' and featured chamomile-infused gin, 'floral milk' (?), falernum, saline, and lime. It was a fancy gimlet, and I was there for it. 

We then had an over-the-top tableside preparation of what is usually a street food, a dish called patta chaat. It is primarily spinach, or in this case kale, mixed with deep-fried bits of gram flour batter seasoned with chaat masala spice blend and topped with tamarind chutney. In the summer, it is typically served with chilled yogurt, but here they literally freeze the yogurt with dry ice for a more dramatic table-side presentation. It was tooth-shatteringly crunchy, and the spiced frozen yogurt was a pleasant new experience. I wish I could remember all the other things we ate. I'm scouring through the menu trying to find them. Obviously, they overfed me to the point of the ridiculous, but once again, I wasn't about to refuse their hospitality.

The Valley of Flowers Cocktail

Ok, I've done my research now. Here's some of the things we had: Jimikand ki Shikampuri (breaded yam patties stuffed with cheese), Nimbu Mirchi fish chunks, Tevar fried chicken, which was spicy because it's made with koora karam, a curry powder with the usual red pepper, cumin, tumeric, coriander, and garlic. My impression is that these blends are all more or less made from the same ingredients, with different ratios of each. The food just kept coming: We had ghee-roasted mutton, Lotus stem kebab with saffron malai cream, chicken kala rassa, a broad spectrum of naan, including cheese naan, garlic naan, red chili naan, roti... I seriously had to eat only one bite of each of these things to keep from passing out. They even pushed me to share some dessert, which was a coconut and jaggery creme brulee with coconut ice cream. (Please send help.)

Note the doofy-looking white guy in the back. 

At lunch and away from the office, everyone on the team was very talkative and universally hilarious. Most of them imbibed with me, including their boss, who, by company policy, paid for the whole meal. To my surprise, there was only a single vegetarian in the group. My counterpart proclaimed he was more of an anti-vegetarian, seeking out meat dishes whenever possible. There's another one of my perceptions that has shifted. I had a great time and waddled back to the office, uncomfortably full, but content.

I synced with my counterpart one last time in the afternoon before closing out my first visit to the studio and returning to the hotel to prepare to depart. I had a lot of assumptions about Indian culture altered on this trip, and some biases challenged and found wanting. I am incredibly fortunate to have been able to meet and interact with such a warm and welcoming group of people. I look forward to coming back and getting a chance to actually see some of this fascinating city beyond the business parks. There are some lovely palaces, a famous fort, and a huge statue in the middle of a man-made lake that I'd love to visit.

As a last hurrah and a show of support to the rest of the North American team members who joined this business excursion on Wednesday, we had dinner and drinks at the same Northern Indian restaurant, Peshawri, that I'd been to the first night. It was just as good the second time, but I won't dive into all the gory details (I forgot to take pictures.) Almost all of the North America team are remote, work-from-home employees, so this was the first time I'd met any of them in person. After a fun chat and a lot of kebabs, I returned one last time to my hotel room to pack up and prepare to head out, very late in the evening, to the airport.

The next post will be about that return journey. Prepare for drama. Prepare for confusion. Prepare for sprints through airports to make connections and for me bitching a lot due to the sheer willpower-breaking duration of the experience. You have been warned.

[Hyderabad, May 2025] Day 4 - Rain and Trotters

 I'm nearing the end of my brief and work-related trip to Hyderabad. It's 6AM here, and I've been up since about 4AM, having never really adjusted to the time difference. Hopefully, that means I'll have less of a difficult time returning to PDT normalcy, but I'm not holding my breath. Today was by far the busiest meeting day for me. I gave a presentation, had one-on-ones with six people, and adlibbed a 'fireside' chat for half an hour with a team of artists who had literally travelled together from across the city just to meet me. Social interactions are, at the best of times, draining to me. I'm a secret introvert, though I can passably put on the mask of an extrovert for my job in short bursts. 

It is, however, quietly and utterly draining for me. So that, coupled with the increase in the intensity of my jet lag (shouldn't I be adjusting by now?), made me feel like I was wandering around in a fugue state for the latter half of the day.

Mutton paya, "Trotter Stew"

Back in the morning, however, we are having my next-to-last breakfast at the hotel's excellent multi-cultural breakfast buffet. I am an adventurous eater and not afraid to try things that might not resonate with American culinary sensibilities. So, when I saw that they were serving a lamb trotters stew called Mutton Paya as one of the dishes, I was genuinely excited and curious to try it out. All apologies to the fans of baby animals for this bit. For those unfamiliar with the concept of a trotter, it's the foot of the animal -- what they trot on, and eating pigs' trotters (aka pig's feet) is pretty typical of south-eastern parts of the United States. Lamb trotters, on the other hand, I hadn't even considered.

Dim sum enthusiasts will have, at some point or another, at least attempted to eat chicken's feet. They are typically steamed or boiled for long enough to be falling off the *manifold* tiny bones, until the cartilage and skin nearly turn to gelatine. In my humble opinion, they are more trouble than they are worth, yielding very little actual meat by the...foot. The same holds true, it turns out, for lamb trotters. The stew itself was highly salted, and there wasn't much else going on for it. The meat I did manage to carve out between the microsurgery of extracting as many of the wee foot bones and the tasteful spitting out of the bones I missed wasn't unpleasant, per se. However, again, the whole dish was predominantly salt-flavored. But there, I've had them. Check that off the unwritten list of adventurous eating. I might pass on lamb's feet in the future, but you never know; I usually try foods twice before I settle on an opinion. The stew was served with a mildly sweet flat bread topped with seeds and segmented into four quadrants. I liked the bread, and it did have a nice contrast with the salty stew.

The small portion of trotter stew wasn't enough to satisfy a newfound hunger I'd acquired for breakfast. (It's probably that India's 8am is my 7:30pm, exactly when my husband and I typically eat dinner). I decided to try the rest of the dishes I hadn't previously had the room in my stomach for from the Southern Indian portion of the buffet. I loaded a plate with small scoops of various pastes and stewy vegetarian things, including: Doodhi Halwa,  Rava Umpa, and Bisi Bele Bath. All dishes I'm sure you're all familiar with.

Oh, alright, I'll go into a bit of detail. Halwa is a sweetened porridge, and Doodhi Halwa (no jokes, please, children) is made from bottle gourd, sometimes called calabash squash. It actually does grow in the Americas, but it's not something you'd typically find on a table. There, they were traditionally dried and used by indigenous cultures to make musical instruments like maracas and drums. Anyway, the bottle gourd flesh is reduced for a good long while, as it has a high moisture content, sweetened with cane or palm sugar, enriched with ghee and whole milk, flavored with cardamom, and topped with slivered almonds and/or pistachios. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

Rava umpa is another thick sort of reduced porridgey dish, this time made from semolina, and made savory instead of sweet. It contains a lot of other very common South Indian ingredients -- green chilies, curry leaves, lentils, onions, ghee, and a common but not-very-western-friendly tree resin called asafoetida. It has the root word for fetid right in the title, and in its raw form, its smell is really something else. We have a container of it in our pantry, and even double-bagged and in a plastic container, you can still smell it when you roll out that drawer. When it's cooked in things, however, it transforms and adds a complex, leek-like taste, and the smell, blessedly, disappears. I liked the Umpa, but next time, I'd eat it with some coconut chutney (a classic addition), since it's a bit dry on its own.

The last bit of stewy, porridgey goodness on my breakfast plate was bisi bele bath, a pleasingly aliterative rice and veggie porridge that gets its name from the spice mix that goes into it, made from fenugreek, cumin, red chilies, gram flour, coriander, cinnamon, clove, and dried coconut. The porridge is loaded with veggies like carrots, green beans, pigeon peas, and flavored with the spice blend, tamarind, jaggery, and of course, ghee. Nothing to complain about here. It was a nice balanced porridge that revels in the complex combo of savory, sweet, and sour.

Tomorrow is my last day enjoying this hotel's breakfast (until I inevitably return for work and hopefully for at least a *little* sightseeing). I will miss it. 

Speaking of the hotel, I learned yesterday (and should have done my research on this earlier), that the ITC Kohenur is named after the Koh-i-noor diamond. The Koh-i-noor is a massive rock, weighing in at 109.6 carats. Its Persian name means "Mountain of Light." Hell yeah. As with many treasures of India and the Middle East and countless other places, it has found its way via colonialism to British 'ownership', and currently graces the Crown of Elizabeth the Queen Mother on display in the Tower of London. India has asked for it back on multiple occasions...

Another lovely set lunch at the studio cafeteria

Anyway, as I said, the day was long. But it was at least pleasantly interrupted by another great lunch at the studio cafeteria. Do you sense the overall themes of this trip by now? The centerpiece of the lunch was Bombay tawa pulao, a Mumbai street food. It's a rice pilaf with green bell pepper, peas, tomatoes, onions, red chili powder, cumin, ginger, garlic, and a spice blend called pav bhaji masala (cumin, clove, fennel, mace, black cardamom, star anise, nutmeg, cinnamon, black pepper, and red chili flakes). Also featured are veggie korma, dal tadka (dal means lentils, and tadka is a method of blooming spices in ghee or oil), and chicken rogan josh, which is a Kashmiri curry (rogan josh means "hot oil" in Persian). The little dessert in the lower left was rava kesari. You might remember the word rava from breakfast in this post. Rava is the South Indian word for semolina. This version, unlike the rava umpa from this morning, was of course sweet instead of savory, and topped with golden raisins and cashews. It was very like a sweetened cream of wheat.

This was easily the worst day for my jet lag so far. I left the office at 5:00PM. It had finally stopped threatening rain and started committing to it. It was, in fact, a full-on thunderstorm, Florida style. The drainage in this area is not great, and the usually unpleasant walk back to the hotel was even more unpleasant, trying to avoid huge puddles and guard myself from the downpour with my sad little travel umbrella. This type of rain heralds the monsoon season, which lasts from June to August. From what I'm told, the monsoons are relentless when they get started, and a coworker who used to air-commute here several times a year said it's probably not a great plan to travel back during the monsoon season, as it can be disruptive to travel and to the experience in general, as you might just be stuck indoors the whole time.

Smoked Chicken Pizza with Ketchup...

Feeling run down again, I retreated into my room, so much so that I didn't even feel like going to one of the restaurants, so I ordered room service and got a damn pizza. That's right; I sometimes succumb to the desire to eat something plain and familiar. The smoked chicken pizza with sun-dried tomatoes was accompanied by, of all things, tiny jars of ketchup. Truthfully, this wasn't all that surprising to me. I have a Gujarati friend, and she has told me several times that people in Gujarat always eat pizza with ketchup, not just as a dipping sauce for the crusts (which still seems unappealing to me), but they slather it on the pizza itself. I double-checked with my new friends here in Hyderabad, and ketchup on pizza is only a Gujarati thing, so the hotel was probably just covering their bases. I even tried it on a slice, but it's not for me. 

Sleepy-time Ryan was pushing his way into the limelight by 9:00PM. I was slowly adjusting! Just in time to have to adjust back, of course. During a typical vacation, there are so many things to distract me from my jet lag that I just power through it. Coming to a place for work, and particularly a place where you can't drive (absolutely no way would I do that), means you have more downtime and a lot less moving from place to place, so I think it hit me harder and for longer. Clearly, I should never have quiet time with my thoughts.

Tomorrow is my last actual day here in India. My flight is at 3:00AM on Friday (yes, you read that correctly, it leaves at three am), and it's recommended that you be at the HYD airport four hours in advance of an international flight as a foreigner, so I'll be checking out at 10:30PM. I leave on Friday and arrive on Friday, even though it's more than a 24-hour door-to-door trip because of all the time I "get back" going west. It's going to be a long, long day. But hey, there's one more breakfast, which ends up being even more adventurous than the lamb trotters. Can you stand the suspense?! Tune in tomorrow.

[Hyderabad, May 2025] Day 3 - Ginger Bugs and Idlis

Jet lag causes some really interesting sleep patterns. Last we met our intrepid adventurer, he was falling unconscious at 8:30PM after his first day at the office in Hyderabad. This provoked waking up at 3:00AM, bright-eyed and ready to face the day -- a day which hadn't even remotely begun yet. Instead of trying to go back to sleep immediately, I pulled out a tool from the insomniac's kit -- don't lie in bed thinking about how you're not sleeping. Instead, get up, do something, engage the mind for a few minutes, and then try again later. Ideally, this activity doesn't involve screens because staring at the bright light generated from them isn't particularly conducive to settling the mind. Following world news these days doesn't help either. The screen part, I ignored. Screens are more or less all I have with me on this trip -- my phone, my computer, my Nintendo Switch, those items and their subsequent accessories were practically my entire loadout for this trip, beyond clothing and toiletries.

I started writing the first day's blog post. These posts take me about three hours to pull together, so getting a head start is essential on a schedule where I only have a few hours here and there in the day to myself. When I ran out of steam there, I listened to part of the audiobook I was reading-- the first book in the Murderbot Diaries series. This isn't a book blog, so I won't do a comprehensive review of the plot here. But the one-liner is that it's the internal monologue of a sentient cyborg who overrides his programming and spends much of his newfound freedom consuming schlocky media while pretending to be 'normal'. It clearly has a strong autism metaphor just under the surface of the story, and it's also hilarious.

After a few chapters of that, I was ready to return to bed. I was graced with a few more hours of sleep before committing to being up for the day. A quick glance out the hotel room window showed it was going to be cloudier, but the threat of constant rain that was prophesied by the weather app had still not come to pass; perhaps tomorrow. It says 80% chance tomorrow. We'll see. 

I had a few hours to kill before I was expected at the office, so I decided to risk watching a little Indian television. I landed on a cricket match. Cricket is India's national sport, and they take it just as seriously as most of Europe takes football (not the American kind). Watching the bowlers and the wickets and the silly-mid-offs was baffling stuff, but the delightfully incomprehensible game was a pleasant backdrop to finishing up that blog post. Maybe someday I'll take the time to sift through the complexities...but don't count on it. I've never been a sports person.

Idlis with coconut chutney
and Sambar 

I was super excited about the hotel breakfast today because now I could dig into Southern Indian breakfast traditions, including something I'd really looked forward to -- idlis! Idlis (I *think* this is how you pluralize it. A single one is called an idli) are fluffy little discs of fermented rice flour, water, and lentils. The fermentation makes them slightly sour, which makes them a great breakfast food. Beyond the sourness, they taste of very little, but that's also the point, because it makes idlis the perfect medium to absorb other flavors, and in Southern India, there are a few very common accompaniments.

The first is sambar, and it's one of those dishes that varies pretty broadly from household to household. At its heart, it's a vegetable stew (like many dishes here), made predominantly from onions, lentils, a spice blend, and almost always contains 'vegetable drumstick', which, upon doing some research, is the pod of the Moringa plant. It's a bit stalky, and it's what makes sambar a 'healthy' meal, as the pods are loaded with antioxidants and liver-supporting enzymes (which I could always use).

The second common accompaniment is coconut chutney. Folks like me growing up in the 1980s in the US may well remember a very specific type of chutney that was common in US supermarkets. It was very sweet and sour, chunky and loaded with tamarind and mysterious fruits (of which raisins were very prevalent). In reality, this type of chutney was more of a colonial British invention. Chutney in India, particularly Southern India, is infinitely variable; they are really a spectrum of saucy accompaniments made often from tomatoes, peanuts, tamarind, coconut, green chilies, mint, and countless other things. One of the most commonly consumed for breakfast with idlis is coconut chutney.

The first thing I noted when digging into the grainy-looking white paste with my idli was that it was surprisingly not at all sweet. Much in the way that young coconut flesh scooped right out of a coconut has a savory and complex taste, so too coconut chutney. Despite looking grainy, it's actually quite soft and smooth. Chilies, tamarind, and coriander make an appearance as well. It was very pleasant.

Dosa with accompaniments.
I forgot to take a picture before digging in.

I think seeing that I was eating more or less a traditional Southern Indian breakfast, one of the waiters (for there were many) decided I should like to try a dosa as well. I've said before that I can't eat much these days, but I was *offered* a dosa and by the gods, I was going to take it. It arrived in all its thin, crisp-chewy goodness on a palette with a bevy of chutneys. It was so good that I ate most of it, despite wanting to explode. Dosa is made with basically the same ingredients as idlis, but instead of being steamed into a thick, white, chewy disc, it is treated like crepe batter, spread into a very thin pancake on a hot griddle with ghee. It's sour because it is fermented, just like idlis. The sourness is more pronounced in dosa, possibly due to the cooking method.

My day at the office was packed with meet-and-greets. The walk to the office was just as unpleasant as the day before, except it was a bit hotter today. It was hitting 92°F by 11am, with nearly 100% humidity. I was sweating through my shirt before I got to the first turn.

Some of the little treats people
kept bringing to my desk

One of the interesting cultural behaviors I noticed in the office today was that many people came up to my desk and gave me little gifts -- water bottles, soda, little cookies. They didn't even want to speak, really, just give me a gift and leave. The consensus on the internet is that this is very common. It was certainly charming. One of the gents in the office is known for making a gently fermented drink called 'ginger bug', which, despite its menacing name, is really just an infused fermented fruit soda. It was against my better judgment that I decided to try it. One of the things I was warned about was that drinking the municipal water was a no-no, not because it's polluted or anything, but because the bacterial make-up is just so different than that of North America, that it will inevitably give you the trots. I did it anyway, reader...and so far I have not paid the price. The drink was light and refreshing, not nearly as aggressively sweet or sour as kombucha. He had me try a blueberry version. Tomorrow, he wants me to try a rose and raspberry variety. We'll see. I want to! I also don't want to spend my return flight running to the airplane bathroom.

He and a few other guys stood around with me in a very 'at the water cooler' moment, drinking ginger bug and chatting. They eagerly shared their opinions of the other major cities of India. A lot of people move here from other places in India to work for the big tech companies here in Hyderabad. The guys at the studio claim Hyderabad is the best of the lot because it's so small (it has an urban center of 9 million people, friends). They aired their grievances with the other major cities and particularly spoke harshly of Mumbai, primarily due to its intense population density. The urban area of Mumbai has a population of *18 million*!

I'll reiterate that everyone here has been absolutely lovely. Friendly, chatty, and while sometimes shy, always happy to talk casually with me. I got to join some of the team at their office cafeteria, and they had prepared a box lunch for me that consisted of a huge bowl of chicken biryani, which is the crowning glory of Hyderabadi dishes. Served with raita and the ubiquitous chutneys, this savory-sweet rice dish typically has peas, sautéed onions, cardamom, cinnamon, curry leaves, and chilies. The cafeteria biryani was mild, but I've been told that typically most Hyderabadi food is quite spicy. I'm certain everything in the hotel is tragically toned down for Westerners, but even the biryani in the cafeteria here wasn't particularly spicy. Just a hint. Rolling out of the cafeteria (they eat big lunches!), 

The lanes are more like suggestions than rules

I spent the rest of the day in meetings with everyone under the stars and returned to the hotel around 5pm in a profound haze of jet lag. Through sheer will alone, I kept myself from going immediately to bed at 5pm. I took it easy -- a bath and a trip to the rooftop bar (the other bar at the hotel). The rooftop bar was nice, although the ambience of the street below was not particularly relaxing due to the sheer chaos of the roads at rush hour here. The lanes are more like suggestions, and as far as I could see, there are very few traffic lights. While using car horns as a primary means of communication was prevalent in Cairo, it has nothing to the level of cacophony on the Hyderabad streets at 5:30pm.

I won't dwell on my evening meal and cocktails because I kept it simple tonight due to the amount of food I'd consumed during the rest of the day. A few gin martinis and some deep-fried lamb kebabs, which with mint chutney were all I had, and I couldn't even finish that. But despite the street symphony, I really enjoyed sitting on the 40th floor looking out over the massive city in relative peace, in the wet-hot breeze of early evening in India.

Tomorrow looks a lot like today, with wall-to-wall meetings in the plan. Some other members of my team are arriving here to help with knowledge transfers with their counterparts. Tomorrow I'm having lunch with a small bunch of people outside the office, which should be fun. Until then, dear readers.

[Hyderabad, May 2025] Day 2 - Northern Indian Food & Southern Indian Hospitality

I woke up on the first day of my stay with about six hours of sleep under my belt, but ultimately feeling energized. The view from my hotel window on the 22nd floor revealed itself in the morning mist. It overlooks a lake with a cool suspension bridge and a little island surrounded by white stones. There's a little market across the busy street below. I'm not looking at the main part of the city (but I'll get a lovely view of it from the office later.)

My hotel has a free breakfast, so I took advantage of it, but man, I was not prepared. It was a big spread, and I was a little lost in the choices, not knowing what went with what or which things to focus on. By the time I'd finished my meal, I had a more precise grasp of things, but this first meal was a little disorganized.

Iranian Chai, sweet and creamy

I was told by my coworker friend in the US, who had already made this trip, that the first thing I had to do at breakfast was order an Iranian chai. It took a little time to get to me because it was clearly made fresh. Iranian chai is strongly spiced and made with condensed milk, so it's super sweet, but creamy and oh so good. You can't drink much of it due to the intensity of the sweetness, but they didn't *give* me much of it, so that was a relief. There's actually a lot of Iranian and Mughal influence in this part of India, so you get an interesting cross-section of Northern, Southern, and Middle Eastern food. 

As far as food goes, my readers know that I don't go abroad just to eat some pancakes and bacon for brekky; I want to eat local food. The first thing I spotted that I wanted to try was the fresh fruit.
Why? Because fruit, even the kinds we recognise, tend to taste different or be different varieties of the familiar. I had some plum halves, which had a nice color but were mealy, and some musk melon, which sounds exotic but is really just a melon almost identical to cantaloupe. In fact, all cantaloupes are indeed a variety of musk melon, so it may have just been a cantaloupe. Who knows. That was good, anyway. The papaya I didn't care for. Papaya is one of those fruits that is really hit and miss with me. I've had great papaya in Hawaii, for example, but this version was a testament to the flavours I *don't* like in a papaya. The mango slice I had, on the other hand, was transcendent. Sweet, complex, floral. It is way more interesting than a US supermarket mango. On the same plate, I went for masoor ki khadi dal, a Hyderabadi dish, which is a yellow lentil stew with hard-boiled eggs, and a fluffy pita bread called marar kulcha. 

No bacon and eggs today!

By now, I was full of bread and stew, and only then did I notice an entire section of the buffet I hadn't spotted -- the southern Indian area. Idli! Halva! Coconut chutney! And I, about to burst already. But hey, I'm here for three more days. Tomorrow, I'll share information about southern Indian breakfast food.

I had my counterpart on the other team meet me in the hotel lobby in the afternoon. I wanted to take it easy on the first day, just go into the office and get a brief tour, say hello to some of the team, and get a desk so I could catch up on some work. The walk to the office is not particularly pleasant and highlights the unfortunate dichotomy of progress and poverty of a modern city like this. Rapid growth means lots of construction and construction materials all over the place, and there is no good system of maintaining certain parts of the city, so trash and standing water litter the sides of the road next to where the tuktuks and taxis drop off the office workers. Nor is there a good safety system in place. In a few places, the sidewalks just sort of end in rubble, and you're forced to skirt the edge of the road, a road where the drivers are having their own sort of chaotic free-for-all. Somehow, no one gets hurt in this ballet of madness. I just tried to mirror the locals to get through the gauntlet.

Hyderabad on a clear day in May

The office, on the other hand, is super sleek, and the whole thing smells like a new car. It has a spectacular view of Hyderabad, one that reminds me a lot of being in a skyscraper in Tokyo, with the city stretching out until you can't see it from the mist in the morning. Everyone I met was incredibly gracious and friendly.

A few interesting cultural things I noticed on day one. Indians shake hands very gently, unlike us Americans, where a business handshake has turned into a display of power and dominance. It took me a second to realize I was doing it myself. I corrected my behavior after meeting a few people. 

I also observed that it is perfectly normal for male friends to hold hands while walking down the street, in a show of platonic closeness and support. In fact, it's more acceptable than a man and a woman holding hands in public; PDA is considered very rude. Also considered rude: doing much of anything with your left hand, especially eating. With this taboo, there's not much I can do. My right hand is more or less a limp piece of pasta I carry around to balance out the other side of me. Trying to do anything dextrous with it typically ends in food on my lap. They clearly give foreigners some leeway when it comes to these things. No one has given me the stink-eye...yet.

I was only in the office for three or so hours. This time, I had to make the walk back solo. It didn't spook me as much as I thought it would. I returned in one piece, put my office persona back in the hotel room, and went down to the hotel bar for a pre-dinner drink or two. They offered a few craft cocktails, but there isn't much of a cocktail culture here. Alcohol isn't forbidden by most sects of Hindu, though it's not prevalent. But this hotel definitely caters to Westerners, so there are, in fact, two bars. The other is on the roof, and I intend to try it out tomorrow. The Peacock bar is in the lobby, and a (blind?) piano player was playing some clearly improvised ... new age music is really all I can call it. He played the same four chords for about half an hour, and when he was finished, frankly, I was a bit relieved. 

The Last Cocktail, which
was certainly not the last.

The first cocktail I had at the Peacock bar was called "The Last Cocktail" and was presumably a play on a Last Word, though you'd be hard-pressed to come to that conclusion yourself. It was light, citrusy, and not particularly sweet -- a far cry from the profile of a Last Word, beyond the citrus. They did not list the ingredients, but I'm sure there was cardamom and star anise in it, and probably grains of paradise as well. 

Next up, I had a simple martini with a twist, but I opted for an Indian gin called Baisalmer. Named after a city in the Thar desert, it has herbs and spices from all around India that are mostly basket-infused in a column still, then redistilled to allow it to be labeled a 'London Dry Gin'. Beyond the forward juniper flavors, there was a hint of earthiness, which means that it's likely distilled from wheat or sugar cane, or it's loaded with angelica root. Citrus and coriander control the mid palate, and some peppery notes finish it off. 

Rashemi Kebab

I was finally hungry after my massive breakfast (I ate more than I listed above, but this post was getting long. One of the restaurants in the hotel, Peshawri, specializes in North Indian rustic food, and that means tandoor ovens and kebabs. They had plenty of meat options, and had I the stomach capacity, I would have just eaten all of it, but I opted for a Rashemi kebab, made with paneer. It was served with raw red onion dusted with chaat masala, and the hotel's ubiquitous brilliant green mint chutney. I also got a type of naan called naan amal, which is fermented, so it's slightly sour. Brushed with ghee, it was a great vessel for the kebab.

My last drink of the evening was a "Five Spices", and I really liked this one. I wish I could tell you what's in it, but it was yellowish orange and tasted like cardamom and burnt cinnamon. It was definitely made with jaggery, a palm sugar that I can apparently detect the taste of at 500 yards.

I wish I could tell you I went out and explored the environment afterward, but my jet lag finally caught up with me and I passed out at 8:30pm. Tomorrow, more work, of course, and more opportunities for awesome food and fascinating people!

[Hyderabad, May 2025] Surprise Trip! Hyderabad, Telangana, India - Getting There and Situated

 Hello, few elite readers!

I wasn't expecting to report on a trip this year, primarily due to the weird state of US foreign relationships right now. I won't make this site political, but I haven't felt proud of being a US traveller in the current climate. 

However, I had a surprise opportunity fall into my lap. I am a project manager for a software company, and we have a studio in Hyderabad, India, with which my team is partnering to work on our latest project.  As part of the initial onboarding, I was volunteered to fly out to that studio to meet the team leaders and support their early planning efforts.

And so, as of Saturday, I've been on a business trip to India! I admit, the trip is short, considering the amount of travel one has to do to get from the west coast of the United States to the capital city of the Indian state of Telangana. I will only be here for four days before I head back. The trip from my home in California to the hotel I am staying at was 26 hours, and there is a 12.5-hour difference between the Pacific Daylight Timezone and the India Standard Timezone -- that means I left on Saturday at around 10am, and didn't get to my hotel in 3am on *Monday*. 

Despite the fact that there was a big delay in Chicago O'Hare, I made both of my connections (One there in Chicago, and another in Frankfurt) despite pretty short layover times. Also, to my surprise, I didn't feel entirely annihilated when I arrived at my hotel at 3am. Unfortunately, as it was so early when I got through immigration, the view into the city from the hotel car window was predominantly empty streets and night fog. 

Hyderabad is known as the "City of Pearls" due to its historically significant pearl industry. It still has lots of active old bazaars, but nowadays, Hyderabad is more significant due to its position as an industrial and technology hub. It is centrally located in the subcontinent and draws skilled technology specialists from all over the country, including folks from my own company.

I passed through customs and immigration after a longer-than-average wait for my luggage, but hey, at least it arrived, and despite the fact that I was over an hour late, the hotel car was still waiting for me outside the airport. It is very humid and quite hot in Hyderabad in May, but since it was very early in the morning, the temperature was a 'mild' 85F. Mind you, it was still sweltering due to the high moisture, but it reminded me a lot of Florida in the summer. It's also expected to rain every day that I am here (also a lot like Florida in the summer).

The roads in Hyderabad are wide and mostly laneless. It's a free-for-all, very similar to Cairo, though with nicer cars and a lot more scooters and motorcycles, often with 3+ people stacked on the back, even on the highways. There's also the oh-so-dangerous tuk-tuks here, though I didn't spot many of them in the early morning. Also like Cairo, Hyderabad is that unusual mix of old and poor juxtaposed with the sleek modernity of corporate skyscrapers and business parks. It all felt quite 'Bladerunner'.

My driver got us there after a circuitous journey through not only some very nice highways, but also some strange half-finished roads and u-turns. It was a path that, if I had to navigate on my own, would have absolutely boggled my direction-impaired brain. That brings us to another interesting part of Indian society -- street addresses. I'll give you an example. The ITC Kohenur, the hotel I am staying at throughout my visit, has the following cryptic street address: Plot No. 5, Survey No. 83/1, Hyderabad Knowledge City, Madhapur, Hyderabad, Telangana 500081, India. And honestly, that's a short one. I can't put the address of my company building, obviously, but the address is so verbose it runs up against the character limit of most address forms, even the online ones, well before halfway through the address. How anyone finds anything around here is a true mystery.

Hyderabad is a city going through rapid growth, and the evidence of that is everywhere. Massive half-built apartment complexes are all over the place, as well as the rubble and raw materials of huge construction projects -- new office buildings for big foreign corporations looking for lower-cost centers. Between these gargantuan corporate arcologies, the smaller, typically older, typically shabbier buildings housing the actual businesses, restaurants, and shops needed to support the employees of the huge monuments to late-stage capitalism.

Tomorrow (or later today), I'll get breakfast in the hotel, see the skyline of the city I couldn't see tonight, and head into the office. I am not a tourist on this trip -- this is all business. I won't get to see any of the sites or tour the area at all. But what I can get a feel for in my short visit, through my interactions at the studio, is an impression of the people that live here, and of course, the food.  Stay tuned for that!

Egypt 2023 - Day 12 - Flights Home and The Great Summary

With bleary eyes and heavy hearts, we waved goodbye to Egypt today to begin the long trek home to our lives, roles, and adult responsibilities. Camel-sore, an incessant cough beginning to develop, I could tell by the time we hit the Cairo morning traffic that this would not be a fun journey. Honestly, the traffic wasn't so bad, and we had our old friend Ahab (i.e., The Captain) there to help us through any challenges the Cairo airport might throw at us. But, with two alarmingly short international layovers and fear of Egypt time causing delays, to quote Star Wars, I had "a bad feeling about this."

Our first hurdle was early, at the ticketing counter for Turkish Airlines, which was quite closed when we arrived, a line already snaking its way around the vinyl belt maze in front of the empty counters. We were the only group of the morning shuttle gang that was taking Turkish Air that morning, so we stood alone while everyone else worked their way through first-stage security. Half an hour later, the line finally got moving. I thought it was crazy that they'd booked the shuttle four hours before our departure time of 10:00, but now I could see why.

Once we finally got through security and said goodbye to Ahab and our luggage, we headed to our gate, which was...not open. Again, we were too early. Another half-hour wait, then through the gate security checkpoint. At this point, Egypt time went into effect, and our flight, which never strayed from the status "on time", didn't start boarding until half an hour after our scheduled departure time. By the time we arrived in Istanbul, we had one hour to get through another security line and all the way across the Istanbul airport to our connecting flight to Seattle.

Istanbul Airport is beautiful, but by Atum, it is *vast*. I have never been in a larger airport, and we really had to hoof it to get to our flight. Every time I thought we were nearing our goal, we'd turn a corner and boom, another mile-long corridor to traverse. By the time we got near our gate, the flight board was flashing "last call," though plenty of people were waiting in line when we arrived for yet another security inspection of our bags. I was coughing up a lung and wheezing and nauseated from exertion by now (I would discover later that this was due to contracting acute bronchitis somewhere along the way) -- it was not a great way to start a twelve-hour flight.

After choking down an unsatisfactory meal of mac-and-cheese (my own fault), I took a sleep aid and had a restless eight-hour nap, trying to find a comfortable position for my camel-bruised posterior. By the time we arrived in Seattle, I'd slipped into that other world of jet lag and exhaustion where nothing feels real.

The rest of the journey home progresses without incident, aside from an ironic near-accident in the taxi on the interstate back to Sacramento. I will spare you those details. 

It's time to summarize this trip.

As I said at the start of this adventure, cruises aren't really my thing. I don't tend to have much in common with the cruise crowd, and I don't like events that I consider 'forced fun.' I tend to find that cruises often go to the worst possible locations, so filled with tourists as to be uninspiring, and so tainted by the cruise routes themselves as to be pastiches of their original paradises. I have to say, though, even as a fairly seasoned traveler, I was very intimidated by the idea of going to Egypt due to its reputation for taking advantage of tourists, for the undrinkable tap water, the inhospitality to people of my own, and my husband's orientation, and a perceived lack of the conveniences that I've grown so accustomed to in all of the "English-friendly" places I've got to in the past.

This was another one of those "check your expectations" sort of moments, and precisely the reason travel is important. Were our experiences filtered through the lens of the tour, the cruise, and our delightful Egyptologist who made sure we were focused on the 'right' things? Of course they were! I am under no presumptions that we saw one-tenth of the 'real Egypt' that modern-day Egyptians experience every day. While we did get some understanding of the country's current socio-economic state, we were there to revel mostly in Egypt's rich past as the cradle of civilization and not to bear some sort of Western witness to its modern problems.

All of the native Egyptian people we met on the cruise and the hotel staff were friendly and personal with us. Walid, our Egyptologist, became a friend along the way. He was honest about Egypt's difficulties as well as its pride. He was ebullient and excited by our understanding and interest in the things that also bring him joy: his country and his life's work. We saw students being students, kids being kids, and hard workers hustling their trades. We saw people just trying to get along in less-than-ideal socio-economic situations, like everywhere else.

There were parts of the journey that made me uncomfortable. The trash problem facing Cairo is a real issue, and the massive, invasive city projects sometimes make the place seem more like a war zone than a functioning city. The levels of poverty are high. But within all of that muddle is the will of a tough people who might just be able to figure it out.

I loved this trip. The efforts through the centuries by the whole world to unearth and preserve the history of a land that represents so many of the 'firsts' in human history have been really awe-inspiring to see. Every temple, tomb, and ancient wonder we witnessed had its own mind-boggling story. I got to touch the sands of the Sahara and put my fingers in the Nile. I got to see places that dwarf the entire history of my country by millennia that are still standing to this day. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair! Indeed, Ozymandius, indeed.

The Bus One gang in our only picture together

I'm very grateful for having had the opportunity to see such a beautiful land and experience a culture so far from my own experience. Thanks to my fellow bus one partners, my awesome travel companions Steph, Rob, Carrie, and Gordon, and a special thanks to my lovely husband Sean for sharing this adventure with me. It won't be one I'm soon to forget. With that, I'll sign off this travelogue once again. Until our next adventure!

Thank you, readers, for going along with me during this once-in-a-lifetime journey, and keep traveling!