Sights and smells of old Hyderabad....

Spent yesterday in old Hyderabad, the sights and smells were an adventure.  I thought there was traffic in L.A. there is nothing like the traffic in old Hyderabad on a festival weekend.  No stop lights, no stop signs, no use of lanes, but even with every car, rickshaw and motorcycle fighting to move their way forward inch by inch we only saw one accident.  AMAZING!!!  Charminar is a bazaar in old Hyderabad and since it was festival weekend in was jammed packed with people of all ages and sizes.  Mind you that no one is really that tall here.  I'm probably the height of most tall men here so every store was yelling out I got big sizes... Boy did they make a girl feel special. Ha ha.  They did have the coolest sandals with bling galore but none of the stores had any shoe size bigger than an 8 1/2.  I've attached some pictures of Charminar and we climbed to the top and took pictures of the bazaar below.  I bought two sarree draping, bangles and some other treasures while we were there.  Thank goodness for our driver who spent the day with us directing us to stores and helping us communicate with them. On our drive over to new Hyderabad the side of the road was covered with trash that all the wild dogs were eating from, it wasn't a pleasant sight but wasn't a pleasant smell either. PU!  New Hyderabad is near the Mind Space compound where we are staying.  There are big shopping malls and a Hard Rock Cafe that we went for dinner.  We all needed a reminder of home.  Wasn't able to sleep much over the night 'cause I'm so used to being up for work so I'm hoping I can just take a nap and get by today.  My throat has been bothering last night and this morning & I think it's from all the pollution in the air I'm hoping it will go away soon.  Officially one week down and 5 more to go.  Will write some more tomorrow.

KB