Hyderabadi Week End

Tonight was a good night.

I went to dinner with a bunch of the expats at a chinese restaurant called Aroma right next to good ole Indi Joe's. However, this was an infinitely better dining experience.

I would have to say that this was probably the most enjoyable meal that I have had so far in Hyderabad. We ordered more appetizers than you can imagine! Fried shrimp things that looked like corn dogs, crazy tasty little mini corns, and a variety of other things that I had never tasted, but thoroughly enjoyed.

Beyond the food, the conversation was great. Since most of us are around the same age, much of the dinner was spent talking about pop culture moments of our late childhood to early adolescent years. The favorite cartoons, the memorable 80's songs and ohh yes, of course, those early childhood crushes where we started to realize we weren't so innocent anymore. You know, that crush where you realize you might want to do more with a girl than run her down on the playground and smack her one cause you like her?

About half of us followed up the evening by heading over to a club/lounge called Touch where I met my flat mates who had spent the evening packing for their trip to Varanasi. I had planned on going this weekend, but I found that I could get my flight for a couple hundred dollars cheaper at a later date and have decided to check out the sites in Hyderabad, instead.

Along with being a club/lounge, Touch is a hookah bar, so we spend the remainder of the evening drinking King Fisher and puffing away on some coffee flavored tobacco. For those of you who haven't tried, hookah is a very tasty experience that I highly recommend, even to you scoffing non-smokers out there.

Perhaps the highlight of the night was the fact that Travis was not going to be able to get into the club because he had on flip flops. We took him back down to the car so he could catch a ride home, but our driver, Gopal, wasn't having any of that and came upstairs to talk to the bouncer to make sure he got in. We thought that 100 rupees in the bouncer's hand would do the trick, but after that failed, Gopal wasn't about to let Travis head home and swapped shoes with him so he could hang out for the evening.

So classic, but at the same time I really feel that it speaks for the people here. The unabashed, willingness to be genuinely generous is so commonplace here, it has taken me some getting used to. I keep waiting for the catch, but there isn't one. I wonder what that says about where I come from.

Anyway, to my chagrin, Touch closed at midnight and everybody has gone to bed. So I guess I will take their cue and do the same. A good end to a rough week, with high hopes of an exciting and interesting weekend.