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...
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| Hyderabad by night. Bridge over the Durgam Cheruvu lake. InOrbit shopping mall on the far side. |
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| Hussain Sagar Another city centre lake. I walked around it. Three very hot & sweaty hours. |
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| 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. |
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| Makkah Masjid (17th century mosque) |
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| In the distance: Charminar (16th century mosque) |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
