The Last Day

Well, I've made it back safely from Hyderabad now and I am definitely glad to be back, although I did enjoy the trip quite a bit. Even though I did have quite a bit of fun on the trip I also experienced some of the most culture shock I have experienced since I have been here (well, I guess ever, actually). The two main things that will take some getting used to while I'm here in India (which I probably only have to worry about on trips) are the lack of toilet paper and the Indian concept of lines.

First of all, the toilet paper - I did not see a single roll of toilet paper the whole time we were in Hyderabad (4 days). Fortunately, I was half expecting this, so I took to collecting napkins at meal times (although those weren't available at most meals because when one uses his hands to eat, he doesn't usually seem to care too much about napkins).

Second of all, the lines - there is no real concept of a line. I had heard that this was true of different places in the world, but I was kind of hoping India was not one of them. Basically, if a person wants to get somewhere, he has to stick his elbows out, put his head down, and go head first into the crowd. This would not be much of a problem except that I usually don't have a problem with letting other people go first. Therefore, I will let other people go first, but then different Indian people in our group will say stuff like, "Come on Steve, get on the bus - what are you waiting for?" I just generally have a problem with fighting to get in somewhere. Ever since I was a little kid I've been taught to not be the "me-first, me-first" type of person so I guess it just goes against my nature.

Regardless of the culture shock I experience, I was still quite able to thoroughly enjoy my last day in Hyderabad. In the morning we headed first for Charminar which is a structure in the center of Hyderabad which apparently was erected to celebrate the eradication of the plague in Hyderabad. It was really cool and made for some great pictures. After that we headed for Snow World :O . We were originally going to go to the Hyderabad zoo, but apparently people around here don't see snow very often so they wanted to go to this place. As I expected, it was kind of lame. It was a room that was much smaller than I had imagined, which was, indeed, very cold, and had nasty looking snow lying on the floor. It also had some slides with really bumpy ice on them, which were used with toboggans (it was as painful as it looked). So we spent about an hour at this Snow World, which was alright - the cold actually got me thinking about winters back in Michigan.

After we headed for lunch at the Seventh-day Adventist Union office in Hyderabad there were two options - a waterpark or shopping. I decided to go shopping (because I've been to a waterpark before and I didn't have my swimming trunks). Shopping turned out to be a lot of fun. We went to a very crowded street market. I decided to go looking for books in book shops. First, I had to find the book shops so I asked someone in our group where the book shops were and he directed me to the next intersection and to the right where he said the whole street was all book shops. I went to where he pointed out and sure enough, there were all the book shops. I started exploring, but quickly found out that almost every book shop consisted mostly of textbooks (physics, computer science, business, etc.). I was looking for some computer books so this wasn't all bad, but I had little success finding what I was looking for at first. At one point, I was walking between shops when a kid came up to me and said, "Are you looking for books?"

"Yes, I'm looking for books."

"Come here, follow me, book shop." And he pointed across the street.

Needless to say, I was skeptical, but I saw a sign for a bookshop across the street, so I decided to follow him. I was actually glad to have him for crossing the street because he would step out in front of the cars and auto rickshaws and then I would follow. When we got across the street, we went down a short drive and came to a large building which said something about books on it. I followed him in and he took me to a particular stall (I'm sure he was paid to do this). They asked me what books I wanted, I told them, and it took a while but they finally decided that they did not have them. They then asked me where I was from, what I was doing in India, etc. After that, I went back across the street, which was a much scarier experience than the first time (I got honked at a lot). After looking at bookshops for quite a while, I finally found a book I wanted. I told the owner that I wanted it and the bartering started. He said, looking at the price tag, "The price is 399, but you can have for 350."

"200?" I said. Just like that I said it, no "I think it's only worth 200" or anything like that. I really wasn't too confident about how this worked, but I was going to try it.

"200?" the shopkeeper said, "no no, we don't give 50% discounts, this is a new book."

Suddenly I had an inspiration, "This isn't a new book," I said, "it doesn't look new." Then a little while later after examining the book further, "Yeah, see, look, it's been covered." All of this was true - there's no way it was new and it had been covered with a clear cover.

"Well, we can get you a fresh copy."

"OK," I said. If I was going to pay 350 for this book, I would much rather it be a new copy. So I was waiting for one of the assistants to get a fresh copy when...

"Or you can have this copy for 300," the shopkeeper said. Oh snap, this whole bartering thing is kind of cool I was thinking, but then I thought that I had better jump on this price (I don't know why I though this, I guess because the whole bartering thing was kind of stressful).

"OK," I said.

"OK?"

"OK," I repeated, and reached for my wallet. The shopkeeper yelled something at his assistant and accepted my payment. I was pretty happy with myself. It was a rather good deal actually - $6.50 for a book that's over $20.00 on Amazon.

After shopping, we packed up our stuff and headed for home via the train. Altogether, the trip was a great deal of fun. If all of the choices of the places we visited would have been up to me, I would have gone to many more historical sites and skipped stuff like Ramoji Film City and Snow World, but hey, that's just because it's the type of stuff I could do if I were in America. All things considered, it was a great trip and I'm looking forward to my next outing.