2-4/feb hyderabad-bangalore

Once again to charminar, and the bazaar area, but only with zac. We spent the whole morning walking around and talking. This area is quite curious, because absolute black matches quite well with all the possible colors. Muslim women and hindu women. A spectacle for the eyes. The eyes seen through the burcas… now imagination starts flying, and you have the most beautiful woman in front of you. But this black is too thick to be passed through. Make up helps, since their eyes shout too strong to be ignored. And of course, they are the only part of their body that can be seen. Hands and feet can be seen as well. And are the only places where they can express their style, or just themselves. So they paint their hands with henna, and wear thousand, milions of bangles (bracalets). They wear bangles in their ankles as well.So they exploit every single milimeter of their body, with color, gold (imitation), and silver. And of course, those are the things you see, is like they wanna scape from the black dress and burca, a kind of black jail. And the clothes they wear under that, are very very colorfull. And I wonder if they really like to wear this black dress, since colors and personal expressions, are about to explode under it!!? Or maybe all these hidden colors, are in rememberance of their indian nationality! Who knows. People say that hindi islam is very very traditional.

Muslim pray 5 times a day. During the sunrise, at 5:45h, ‘fajar’, at 12:40, ‘zohar’, at 16:30, ‘assar’, at 18:18, during the sunset, ‘maghrib’, and at 19:27, ‘isha’. These times are from this day. They change every day, since the are related to the sun. Or at least, that’s what I think.

A girl came and talked to us, whereas we were looking a shop. She was wearing a burca. We were quite surprised. After that, we went to the park ‘indira gandhi’, where I took the decision to avoid big cities for a while, and go to madurai, 1 day far from hyderabad. Zac will go to bangalore, or hightech city, and probably to chenai, the biggest city in the south. If everything is ok, we’ll meet in 3 or 4 weeks, probably in goa. We’ll probably stay in touch, if anything unexpected happen. After taking a nap, we went to secunderabad. There we saw a group of leprosy people. They saud hi when we passed, but none of them made a single attemt to come. I read in city of joy, that they accept their condition of living a life out the the society, without mixing themselves with non leprosy people. Some of them had no hands, of no feet… covered with pieces of cloth. So their land, their home is a part of the sidewalk, where no one pass by. They are untouchables. This was touching.

We visitef Birla mandir in our last day in hyderabad. It’s a new temple, from the 1976, ,ade by marble, and very very shiny!! It’s all white, and very harmonious. I’d liked it so much. After that, we went to a shop. Zac bought a stone elephant, with 2 elephants inside. Like 2 pregnant elephant. And I bought a kalamkari. A kind of pareo, a shit that can be used to cover myself, to go to the beach, to avoid dirty beds… for everything!!! And the pattern is quite nice. I’m really looking forward to start travelling alone again. With zac was very very good, almost 2 months!! Time flies so fast. And I feel that I’m starting a new trip. Let’s see!!

We reaches bangalore, the hightech city between madurai and hyderabad, at 8 am, but we didn’t start our investigation of the city till 12am. I bought my train ticket to madurai.

I’m quite amazed that we havn’t found much tourist around india (muslim prayers sound). People is complaining about the tsunami effect, that like in thailand, is almost impossible to remember. So we went to a market, where a tailor saw my jeans, that were broken, and after walking for a long time, we laid down on a park. Not very nice by the way, but we were quite tired after the night at the train, that even if they are very comfortable, is not the same. We had dinner together, and said goodbye. Once in the train to madurai, I met a french girl that had been in india many times. And tried to sleep. I write try because there was a big man snoring right next to me. And I hate snoring!!!

And tomorrow, madurai!

7/2/05