Day 56: Zombies in Hyderabad

hahahhahaha I will forever remember how this day felt. It was such a strange day!

It began like this: We woke up early, around seven, because we wanted to make the most of our day in Hyderabad before we got on the train to go home in the evening. Unfortunately, I woke up with a stomach ache and a very bad cold. But whatever right? Carly was also a little sick and Israel was exhausted since he couldn't sleep all night. So we went out, found a rickshaw and directed it to the closest wifi café. The rickshaw driver didn't seem to understand exactly what we meant but we got to a cafe and used my internet stick to look up a few things to do in Hyderabad for the day. 

We took another rickshaw all the way out of the city to this beautiful old Sultan Fort called Golkonda. Carly took some hilarious videos in the rickshaw of Israel and I... we were soooo dead! Haha zombies almost, and we pretty much stayed that way for the rest of the day. We expected that the fort would be pretty cool but it was even better than that. First off it was like a maze of caves and ruins that have no rules. You could go anywhere, climb anywhere. It wasn't very busy in most parts so we just had fun walking around. But then we decided to go to the very top of the fort. Who goes to a fort and doesn't go to the top right?? Well, it turns out that being sick plus climbing up very steep steps for twenty minutes with a rather heavy backpack can make you feel both very out of shape and very dizzy. I had to rest quite a bit. But then we got to the top and the view was beautiful! We got to see just how big Hyderabad is. 

While walking down we realized that half the problem was probably dehydration so we got lots of water and started chugging it. It helped a bit and by the time we got into our next rickshaw we were ready to go shopping downtown at the bazaar. 

But the bazaar we went to was the craziest one we have ever seen!! Charminar is this big shopping area that is 90% bangle stores. Why so many bangle stores??? It was almost ridiculous how many there were. And every single one of the vendors would call out to us to get us to come see there things even though they could see that we weren't going into any of them haha Shopping in India is the only thing that has made me feel very overwhelmed in India. We went to Charminar because we wanted to find gifts for the family we live with in Vizag and our translators. We finished that up eventually but it took way more energy and walking than we expected. 

At this point we were almost literal zombies. We were all trying so hard but we just couldn't think anymore or even walk. So we eventually found a rickshaw to take us to KFC. I think that I will forever and ever and ever love KFC (if I didn't secretly before) because it was wonderful to just sit and eat a chicken sandwich (or two) and fries and feel completely still for a few hours. I'm just beaming as I think about it. YUM.

Backpacking is a wonderful thing and we have so many memories :) But we are excited to be going back home to Vizag, back to our usual routine for a little while! We are on our train through the night and tomorrow morning we will wake up in our lovely city by the ocean!

Goodnight!

Stéf