hyderabad day 3

we decided to do what tourists do on the final day of the trip. we visited an ancient fort - fort golconda. when we learned that our chaperon planned for more shopping in the morning before heading to the fort at 5pm, we decided to take things into our own hands. no, we insisted. no more shopping. we will head to the fort in the morning. wtf, so late, we thought, and no more dum biryani!

and so, the program for the day was changed. we headed to the fort in late morning. it was a good visit, in my opinion. very historical and gave us a glimpse a piece of hyderabad's history. i shan't talk about the fort, you can get them in wikipedia easily. but for many of us, the visit provided us many kodak-moments (old-fashioned word, but yeah, it relates). that was where all the camwhore-selves appeared in all of us. out came our smart phones, and we just clicked away. two of the ladies (from the media team) changed into their sarees and busied themselves posing from the base of the fort to the peak. apart from holding us back again and again, i frankly thought it was a little impractical, given the heat that drained our energies quickly. then again, they were just doing their job.

what's most interesting was the fact that many of the south asians we saw wanted to take pictures with us. i supposed it was not often that they see fair skinned people and thus we became interesting subjects for their photo shoots. and at the rate people were asking us to take pictures with them, we could have earned quick a bit if we charged them! lol! we ended the visit late afternoon and a number of us decided to head back to the hotel first. frankly, many of us were not in the state of mind to eat anything as we had more than enough of indian spices by then. 

the shopping came in the evening after we had our rest in the hotel. for quite a few of us, we wanted to just head to the shopping center outside our hotel for a quick starbucks and a cheesecake, but our chaperon ignored our requests and we ended up being driven to an indian bazaar some long distance away. many of us were fuming mad. a group of them who arrived at the bazaar earlier directed their car back to the hotel. for me, i was stranded with the chaperon who insisted we should shop for things indian. no, i protested. i needed to head back to the hotel. i needed to pack my things and check-out! in the end, my chaperon hailed an uber for me. and a few of my peers hopped along. 

by this time, many of us had had enough of the chaperon and we took over the control of the vehicles. we decided to self-organise into smaller groups and co-ordinated with the drivers at group-levels. we didn't want to subject ourselves to the chaperon's calls anymore.  for me, i decided to take over control of the whole group and appointed group ic for each vehicles. it was also time for us to consolidate and head to the airport for our trip back home. things panned out so much smoother with the chaperon sensing our displeasure and keeping quiet.

and that was our day 3 - historical and defiance.

:-)