Well, it has been one year and four days since our arrival in Hyderabad, India and we have four days left. The time flew by incredibly fast and it feels like we just skipped months.
I decided not to write any entries to the blog this last month as there was not much happening. I hardly left the hotel grounds and Teresa was just busy at the office ensuring that everything was set for her transition back to her office in Nashville. The month however was a really pleasant one in the Ista Hotel, it is truly a fantastic hotel and we will recommend anybody making a trip to this part of the world to book their stay at the Ista. The food at the Ista was nothing but amazing and I had to spend a lot of time in the gym just to ensure that I did not gain too much weight and I did gain a couple, something I am not too happy about.
They have a Japanese section and I got to know the main Japanese chef, Jerry very well. He asked me one evening at dinner if I liked Sushi and he was not very impressed with me when I told him that I tried it once and it tasted too much like fish. Well, he insisted that it was bad Sushi and he made me a bunch the following evening. I must admit that I was very nervous in trying it again but it turned out to be very good! I will however be very careful in where I have sushi since I have had a bad experience with it before. Since then we have had it often and Jerry even gave me a lesson in making Maki Rolls one evening, I got to make my own.
We had some administrative things that we had to attend to also, our original Indian Visas expired and we had to renew it for our last two weeks stay. We also had to make our Visa appointments for our Visas to the United States. All went well and the company Teresa works for assisted us well and made all of this a breeze to go through.
Our flight from Hyderabad to Johannesburg via Doha leaves at four Saturday morning meaning we will not be sleeping much if any on Friday evening. We have a pre-flight Spa session booked for Friday evening after which we will be having our final dinner.
We have spent some time lately to reflected back to our time in India and although there were some frustrating days, and there were plenty them, we had a reasonably good time and it was not that bad as we thought it would have been. We would definitely consider doing it again if the opportunity should arise in the future.
View from our room at the Ista.
Sunset at the Ista.
This was at Sai's house, it was for one of their celebrations.
Sai and his wonderful family, they were really good to us!
Some more of our new friends, Najeeb and his wife Martina. They are from England.
Nice water features at the Ista.
The Japanese Chef at Ista, Jerry.
The master and his apprentice, making Sushi Maki Rolls.
So far so good...
Nearly there...
Almost done...
The cutting, very tricky!
My first attempt at Sushi Maki Rolls!
We got this beautiful wooden Elephant from Teresa's Indian co-workers.
The detail carved in it is pretty amazing.
Just some of the Lunch Buffet selections at the Ista.
Ista Hyderabad.
More water features at the Ista.
Lobby.
Entrance to the Ista.
They take the flowers out at night and put candles in, looks pretty good.
From Monday September 19 it will be forty days until our adventure in India comes to an end. The time sure did go by quickly. We had a fairly busy week, last week Monday we finished off the last admin from handing our apartment back and made sure that the internet and telephone connections got cancelled. We had to go to the Foreign Regional Registration Office (FRRO) on Wednesday to change our address from our apartment to the Ista. You would think that something like that would be a quick "go in and change" thing to do but no, it was not that easy. A bunch of forms and documents had to be completed and prepared including passport photos and three hours later we each had a stamp on our current papers with our new addresses written in by hand. We have to go back on Tuesday to go through the whole process again just to extend our current visas for a further sixteen days.
Sai, the local manager working with Teresa invited us to have lunch with him and his family on Saturday. It was extremely nice of them since nothing really beats a home cooked meal. We got treated to a couple of local dishes that we are not really familiar with and all of it was really good.
On Sunday friends joined us for lunch at the Ista, lunch is as always pretty good and it was fun being able to enjoy it with great company. I know their kids had a great time with all the balloons figures that the children entertainers made them.
Our first week went well in the Ista and all the staff is friendly and are always willing to help with anything.
Sunset at Ista.
I love the way they do our laundry, nice touch with the bow ties.
So we started of the last phase of our journey in India, we moved out of our apartment and settled in the Ista Hotel until our departure from India. All I can say about this is that it is not a bad way to end our year in India, the Ista is a spectacular hotel with top notch service. But there was a lot of things that needed to be done last week before our relocation to the hotel.
It started off last week Monday when I decided to repaint some of the walls that had marks on from where our furniture pushed against the walls. Since I am no stranger to painting and that I had the time I did not foresee any problems. Well, as it turned out Murphy paid a visit that day and things did go wrong. The walls in our apartment are white, plain white. Ahmed took me to a shop that sells paint and I bought all that was needed. I got home and jumped straight into my planned project. The first sign that I ignored was when I opened the can of paint and it had the consistency of a thick paste and it did not look white but rather a creamy color. I never thought about reading the instructions since I have painted before and it was as simple as open and slap the paint on the wall. Well, this time it was not the case, as it turned out I had to dilute it with water and a lot of water. To make a long story short, it turned out to be a huge mess and Ahmed ended up bringing two friends that are painters over on Tuesday that did a proper job off fixing up my mess.
The big move was on Saturday, Ahmed arranged a small truck and some helpers and they were finished in no time at all with moving the furniture to the needy family that we decided to donate the furniture to. The maintenance office at the community where we rented was quick to do a walk through and before we knew it the keys were handed back and we were off to the hotel.
We checked in early Saturday afternoon and basically just spend the rest of the weekend enjoying the relaxed atmosphere the hotel offers.
We had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe one day.
And we were really naughty!
This is all we had left after the furniture was gone.
An empty apartment.
The lounge at the ISTA.
View of the pool from our room.
Our room.
Our room.
We saw this cab one day. On the front door, "100% Assured airport drop" So the other cab companies only take you half way?
Our welcome from Rishi, the very friendly person that services our room.
This was our last weekend in our apartment, we will be checking in to the ISTA Hotel next Saturday. We originally planned to check in on Sunday but due to the Ganesh festivities next Sunday decided to check in on Saturday instead. Teresa's co-workers advised her that the traffic might make things a little difficult when we transport a lot of things. So, I will be updating my blog from the hotel this time next week if all our plans go according to plan.
We finally got all the little problems fixed in our apartment and the only thing that is left will be the touch up paint work after all the furniture is removed. We packed up our kitchen yesterday and it was all given to a needy family that could never afford most of these type of things. Our furniture will be going to the same family and it makes us feel good. As for the rest of our packing, we are about seventy five percent packed and it looks like we will have a spot for everything we want to take with to South Africa and the United States.
I am not entirely sure what we are going to do with food this week but we will make plan. Our dinners are covered though, we ordered dinner take-outs for the whole week at Beyond Coffee today.
It was a short week for Teresa at work, she worked two half days and had one day off due to all the holidays in India and the United States. We were also invited to Ahmed, our driver's house for their Ramadan Festivities. He spoiled us from the moment he picked us up in a much nicer car that he usually drives us in until we got dropped off at home afterwards. We got to meet his family finally after ten months and then we were spoiled with lots of good food. They made us a traditional Hyderabadi Biryani, some chicken, an eggplant dish and traditional breads. Afterwords we got treated with two different types of Kheer that was just as good as the main courses. It was a privilege and honor for us as I know that Ahmed and his family went out of their way to prepare this meal for us.
We again had too much to eat again on Saturday evening at Aroma Of China, a Chinese restaurant in City Center Mall. The food is exceptionally good and well priced. After that we went to The Chocolate Room for dessert.
Ahmed picked us up earlier than usual this morning and took us to look at the largest Ganesh Statue in Hyderabad. He took us earlier to ensure that we missed the larger crowds, something we are thankful for since there was already a bunch of people.
They installed these thrash cans in front of Teresa's office building, it does not seem they are being used yet. Hopefully they will be used soon.
Nothing left in our kitchen except for empty shopping bags.
Chocolate coated Ganesh at The Chocolate Room.
Chocolate Sunday, The Chocolate Room.
Another large Ganesh Statue, but not the largest.
The largest Ganesh Statue in Hyderabad.
Ahmed also showed us this house on Sunday, a diamond shaped house.
The past week did not start off really good but we made sure to end it on a much better note! One of the air conditioning units in our apartment started to give some problems last weekend. I reported the problem to the maintenance office on Sunday, the electrician came to have a look at it and said that somebody else would have a look at it on Monday. The person that came on Monday said that the compressor is faulty and that they will get the air conditioning contractor to come and fix it. The contractor came on Tuesday afternoon just to tell me that the compressor is faulty. Well, I thought that was what they were doing here! First of all, these guys arrive at our apartment without a ladder and just expecting to stand on our furniture. I was not too happy about this and gave them a towel to throw over the dining room chair that they just decided to use. Only after they left I noticed that for some reason they decided not to use the towel and that it was perfectly acceptable for them to leave the chair with black footprints. The maintenance office did send somebody to wash the chair but it still made me pretty angry.
By Wednesday the week started to get better and there was not much to report on. We got invited by our driver, Ahmed to join him and his family at his house next Thursday for Ramadan. We went to the ISTA Hotel on Friday for lunch and had really good food as usual. We did get some good rains during the week and it nearly felt if there was a chill in the air on Friday and Saturday.
Ahmed asked us earlier the week if he could have both afternoons off on Saturday and Sunday for festivals. For the first time in I don't know how long we woke up early on Saturday and went out for breakfast. We had breakfast at Beyond Coffee and went to Inorbit Mall afterwords just to find out that most shops only open at eleven o'clock. We then did get to go to HyperCity since they open at ten. We will be living in the hotel two weeks from know and decided that Saturday afternoon is a good time to start packing most of the things that does not get used daily. Before we knew it two suitcases were full and packed.
We joined Lucy, Anna and Deb at Via Milano again for lunch and had a good time as always, good friends with good food always equals a good time. Deb's driver was really nice and dropped us off at home after lunch since we told Ahmed he could go home for his festivities.
One of the rainy days.
One of the drawbacks if your mode of transport is a motorbike.
