Monday, 10 February 2025

Warangal & Vijayawada, India

I'm a long way off the tourist trail now. In Hyderabad I saw the odd foreigner in shopping malls and at the main historical landmarks, but here I'm pretty much a lone ranger as far as representing the Western world is concerned. As such, I have become a minor celebrity and I'm getting selfie requests. 

Coming to these places gives you a taste of what everyday life is really like for the locals, although of course the locals aren't staying in the Presidential Suite (picture below). That's in Vijayawada. Earlier I had a more modest hotel in Warangal, for which the booking confirmation email stated "Unmarried Couples Allowed". Good to know, albeit not an issue on this particular occasion. I was halfway tempted to troll them by asking if the other half of the couple had to be a woman (gay marriage is not legal in India), but the receptionist didn't speak English, and things could have got awkward quickly if I'd tried using sign language. 

Warangal is a UNESCO World Heritage site, due to its impressive repertoire of monuments from the Kakatiya dynasty, which ruled much of Eastern India around the 12th century. (Indian history is pretty complicated: the country was first unified long before Christ and has been split apart and re-unified and re-conquered several times since then, although things look more or less stable right now.) Vijayawada doesn't have quite the same level of historic interest but it does have the enormous 1.2km Prakasam barrage, upon which depends almost all the irrigation for farming in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The barrage dates from 1855 and the bridge was added in 1957. When you walk across the span you can hear Vedic hymns being piped out non-stop through speakers the whole way. No instruments, just chanting. It's quite eerie.

One downside to going off the tourist trail is the absence of certain home comforts that Indians generally don't bother with, like good coffee. And good beer. And good pizzas. See the first Edd vs Food below. It was at the highest-rated pizza joint in Vijayawada, where the menu boasted "Italian-style" and "New York-style" pizzas. But it was the kind of pizza that would get you shouted at if you served it up in Italy; and if you served it up in New York, you'd quite likely get shot. That said, in all fairness, it was edible enough: roughly on a par with what would result if you oven-cooked a Taste The Difference pizza from the frozen section in Sainsburys. Managing expectations is the key to happiness.

And on a much brighter note, in Warangal I had the best curry of this trip, and possibly of my life to date. See the second Edd vs Food below. England's cricket team may be having a tough time in India, but it's all smiles here for me.



Prakasam Barrage

Reverse view of the above photo

Wise words indeed. Especially if you say them in a comedy Indian accent.
Another one I saw was 'Use Seatbelt To Avoid Death', which is admirably direct.

Presidential Suite in Vijayawada

Thousand Pillar Temple (roughly 12th century AD) in Warangal

Warangal Fort, former capital of the Kakatiya dynasty

Edd vs Food #153
Indian pizza. See comments above.
All of the meat visible in this picture is chicken.

Edd vs Food #154
Curry heaven. See comments above.
Chicken patiala with biryani rice at Aranyam in Warangal
Interesting touch: an omelette, which you can just see sticking out from under the curry.


Tuesday, 4 February 2025

Hyderabad, India

India is divided into 36 states and territories. All of my first three blogs have been from Maharashtra, the second-biggest state, which has about the same number of people as Japan. Now I'm in Hyderabad, the capital of the twelfth-biggest state, Telangana. Hyderabad alone has a population roughly that of Sweden.

On the train here from Solapur I talked to a young Indian chap who worked as an electrical engineer. He was astonished to learn that I write computer code for a living without having a degree. I guess this reflects the ferociously competitive Indian tech jobs market: usually you need to have a good degree, in a numerate subject, from a reputable university, before they'll even look at your CV.

And Hyderabad is India's second-biggest IT hub after Bangalore. (Part of the city centre has been semi-officially renamed 'Cyberabad'.) Plenty of European and American businesses have outposts here, and in some cases they match the working hours of their head office. As such the local Metro has multiple rush hours and is always busy.

But even when it's packed, the Metro is still preferable to walking the streets. Indian cities are not pedestrian-friendly. Quite often when the signals change and the green man appears, the traffic just keeps on going anyway. At night, there aren't always streetlights. I don't have any reflective clothing in my backpack but I do have the option of removing my hat in order to give oncoming motorists a shiny chromedome glare. Or at least those motorists who've bothered to put their headlights on, which is by no means all of them.

I do like the auto rickshaws though. They're cheap as chips (my most expensive to date is about £1.60 for a four-mile ride) and you can almost always summon one quickly via Uber. They're not big enough for two people with suitcases, but they're certainly big enough for one person, with or without backpack. And they're open to the elements, of course, so at speed the wind chill effect cools you down nicely from 30°C to 15°C or so. Bliss.

Next up on Edd's Travels: a couple of places that definitely aren't IT hubs, or indeed any other kind of hubs...


Hyderabad by night.
Bridge over the Durgam Cheruvu lake. InOrbit shopping mall on the far side.

Hussain Sagar
Another city centre lake. I walked around it. Three very hot & sweaty hours.

Herbal remedies. I presume 'bold head' is actually referring to baldness.
No worse than some of the nonsense placebos we get flogged back home.
"Homeopathy", indeed.

Makkah Masjid (17th century mosque)

In the distance: Charminar (16th century mosque)

In the south of town, along National Highway 65, there's a whole row of shops like this.
Selling nothing but ginger and garlic.
And even from the street, it all smells so good.

Edd vs Food #152
This is the "non-veg" option in the posh Vistadome train carriage.
Along the lines of airline food, as you see. But still not bad at all.