Back from India (with more pictures)

I got back to my house in New Jersey at about 5 PM on Friday evening. The line through Immigration moves quickly but my bag was one of the last off of the luggage carousel. Customs went pretty quickly as well. I am glad that I lined up a car to take me home because there is no way I could have handled the drive down the Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway on the Friday evening of a long weekend.

I slept most of both flights. I probably only got about 6 hours of sleep over the 2 days I was on the ground in Hyderabad. I got 2 hours on the first night and 4 hours the second night. Since my flight was leaving at 1 AM on Friday I toughed it out and fought the need to take a nap before heading the airport.

The CEO of the company that I was visiting (he is a Canadian living in California) wanted to go to a shop to look at some wood carvings. Since I needed to buy some gifts as well I decided to tag along. I bought some pearls, a couple of bracelets and a cool carving of an elephant family.

Getting into India was easy once I got my visa together (I used CIBT). Now I can take as many trips as I want for the next year. I think I set a bad precedent by my willingness to travel coach class to India on short notice. Next time I am going to have to insist on business class (coach was not bad but on the trip from Hyderabad to Frankfurt some guy got into with me because I was trying to open a packet of nuts and I guess I made to much noise).

I missed my daughter's Field Hockey game because I thought it was a 4 PM but it was moved to 5 PM. I could have made it. They beat Red Bank Catholic by a score of 1 to 0. I went to the school to pick my daughter up and the team was really excited as they got off the bus.

Holmdel High School Football team was playing Barnegat High School at 7 PM. My daughter and some of the other members of the team decided to go directly to game. Since I was going to have to come back to pick her up I decided to attend the game as well. I am glad I did since the game went into overtime. Holmdel won the game and remains undefeated. I thought it was kind of funny that I started the day off at the Hyderabad, India Airport and finished the day at a High School football game.


This is the pool at the Marriott Hyderabad. This is a new hotel in the area. I ended up eating all of my meals at the Hotel. If I end up going back I am going to venture out more. I was a little intimated by the whole experience. Even though I travel a lot for work I have only been out of the US once before and that was to go to London in 2000. I have been to Canada a lot but that does not really count since it was about a 90 minute drive from where I grew up.

Hyderabad has statues all over the city. Including a large Budda built in the man made lake called Husain Sagar that is in the center of the city.

I am not sure what the name of this temple is. It is on a hill that reminds me of Coit Tower in San Francisco. This is as far as we can go without taking off our shoes. I was not doing that although I wish I had been more adventurous but it was such a short trip I never got over the intimidation factor of being in a strange country.

The walk up to the Temple is lined with stands just like this. The Coit Tower reference is really reenforced here.
This is the Cricket Stadium in Hyderabad. There was a big match friday India vs Australia. I was watching a replay of a Cricket match in my hotel room on ESPN (it came on after a replay of the 2006 Winter X Games Super Pipe replay). The games are annouced just like a baseball game. If I had stayed over the weekend I would have tried to get tickets.