Thursday, March 21: Hyderabad to Delhi

We completed fifteen campus visits in three cities. Today, we left Hyderabad to fly to Delhi, where we would have a final round of meetings. The morning was unscheduled, and the group had differing ideas about how to spend it. Some wanted to lounge by the pool; others wanted to squeeze in another round of shopping. Jay, my colleague who had accompanied me to downtown Mumbai, suggested a round of sightseeing. Hyderabad does not offer many tourist-ready landmarks. It just seems to sprawl. But, we quickly decided on two religious sites relatively close to the hotel.

Today, Hindus celebrate Holi, a springtime festival characterized by splashing friends with bright colors. The celebration is more common in northern India, but I hoped I might see some of the action. I didn't expect it would lead to quiet streets and closed stores. We arrived at a lakeside park where boats ferry tourists to an island featuring a large statue of Buddha. When we asked at the ticket counter when the next departure was, the worker said the boat launches with a minimum of 20 people. Aside from the maintenance crew, we were the only visitors in the park. We waited fifteen minutes and still no one else showed up. The one time we were eager for a crowd in India, we were alone!

Jay and I at the base of India's largest Buddha statue.

Finally, the clerk agreed to sell us tickets. Within fifteen minutes about twenty more people appeared, filled the boat, and disembarked on the island. There was no narration or significant signs, so I can't say why a Buddha sits in the middle of an artificial lake in the middle of a heavily Muslim city in a Hindu nation. None of our fellow passengers seemed to treat the trip as religiously meaningful. That stood in contrast with our second stop, a hilltop Hindu temple. Here, we had to remove our shoes and surrender our phones before joining a line of pilgrims on a white marble staircase. At the top, visitors waited in line to pass by an ornately garlanded silver and black elephant-headed statue. It reminded me of Roman Catholic visitors to the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico. We passed through several more terraces with side shrines on the way down and onto a rickshaw.

I'm exiting a "tuk tuk," or autorickshaw.

We returned to the hotel and immediately boarded the bus for the airport. A lot of talk among the group has turned to logistics: who has which flight home, what should we do with excess brochures we brought from our home institutions, and how will we navigate the checked luggage weight restrictions. Leaving Hyderabad, we saw vestiges of Holi with young people covered in paint. At the airport, we marched through the layers of security. Every supermarket, museum, and temple in India makes visitors enter through a metal detector. They frequently go off without any repercussions. I later read that the park we visited this morning to catch the boat had been the site of a terrorist attack killing dozens of people in 2007.

Motorcyclists showing their Holi colors.

The flight to Delhi started off smoothly, but 20 minutes in the pilot announced technical problems, and we had to return to Hyderabad. Engineers fixed the problem part, the plane refueled, and then took off again. We arrived later than expected in Delhi but still much earlier than our 1 am arrival in Hyderabad. Again, everyone marveled at my efficient packing as several had to pay excess baggage fees. Many of these same people bought bags worth of clothes and jewelry in Hyderabad. As with all of the logistics, transportation from the airport was smooth. Right away we could tell that Delhi was greener, cooler, and more refined than the other cities we visited. The route to our hotel took us past a landscaped boulevard lined with embassies behind security walls.

My bag, the black one in front, alongside my colleagues' luggage.

Another Taj Hotel, and more luxury. We all checked in and then gathered for dinner. I used the hotel sink to wash what I think will be my last garment of the trip because I have enough clean everything else to carry me until Sunday. We have some free time in Delhi tomorrow and Sunday, and Jay and I are already scheming on where we can visit.