High times in Hyderabad

How do I start my rickshaw tale? Tough to explain, but I'll give the beginning a try.

About eight weeks ago, Marmar (those of you who don't know Marmar are beyond hope, so don't worry about it) gave me a shout-out from Cherbourg, France, where he was working, asking me to do the Mongol Rally with him. That race, in which a bunch of boozy Brits drive a car with a less-than-one-litre engine from London to Ulaanbataar, takes place in the summertime, so Marmar couldn't actually make it, but he pointed me to another event organized by the same company, the Institute for Adventure Research, called the Rickshaw Run, a 3,500-km charity rally in an auto-rickshaw, from Cochin, Kerala (the lush jungly southwest of India) to Darjeeling, West Bengal (the tea-famous hill station nestled between Bhutan and Nepal, in the country's almost-extreme northeast). You're in India, said Marmar. You must do this.



So we scrambled and we raised some money. We fenagle time off of work from our various NGO's, promising to raise some money for them (just a few drops of it, it turned out). We assemble our team (above), the Boondogglers, set up a website, and planned the trip as little as possible in order to stay perfectly in line with the Institute for Adventure Research's general ethos. We were (clockwise from the left, in the above photo), Rogier Jacobse of Holland, Benji Holzman of Australia, and yours truly. Check out the Boondogglers blog for more info.

The trip was pretty incredible. Almost indescribable, in fact. We made it, of course, after an excessive 4,200 km, near-breakdowns, scuff-ups, mild bribery, lost tracks, bumpy roads, and lots of biriyani and beer, and I'm still a bit stunned to be back in Bombay. Over the next few posts I'll try to sort through the images we made and remember what the Rickshaw Run was like. Because it's hard to describe. I'm a bit addicted to adventure, now, and I vow I'll do something like this again. Just watch me.



My leg of the journey began in Hyderabad, which means I was only along for about 2,200 km, because I was in Rajasthan with Mags and Dad for Christmas until a few days into 2007 (more on that trip in later posts). Above is the center of the city seen from the Char Minar (see below), a massive monument to the rise of Islam in India. Note the flocks of rickshaws. Really quite a beautiful city, Hyderabad.




There's the Char Minar, the Arc d'Triomphe of the Deccan, and the world famous Beard Minar with his monkey-eared son by his side. On the real, though, Hyderabad has a very Persian Muslim feel to it, and you see a lot more people like this, wearing hajj skullcaps and thick beards. Oh yeah, and you can get real meat there, which is a plus. Hyderabad is, incidentally, also where they invented biriyani.

The city's famous mosque, one of the oldest in India:



Inside, the beautiful tombs of the Nizams of Hyderabad. I spent a slow day in Delhi waiting for a plane to Hyderabad, the day before I met up with the Boondogglers, reading the final two chapters of William Dalrymple's White Mughals, the book that really put him on the map in India (an earlier book of travel writing about Delhi called City of Djinns was popular too, but not ground-breaking). Dalrymple (with whom, incidentally, I got a bit battered a few weeks ago at the launch party for his new book, The Last Mughal, at the Taj Land's end in Bandra... It was sponsored by Black Dog Scotch, and I had just gotten off work, and I had to deal with my empty stomach and an open bar... It was messy, but fun, to meet the historian) is a great researcher, and White Mughals is an imperfect history of a British colonial soldier who "falls in love with" and marries a Samayyid (descendent of the Prophet Muhammed) princess named Khair-un Nissa of Hyderabad and proceeds to bridge the gaps between the Mughal empire in the Deccan and the British East India company. The author conveniently overlooks the fact that the soldier, a rosy-faced charmer called James Achilles Kirkpatrick, was in his mid-40's when he impregnated the 14-year-old Nissa (ie, he was no cultural bridge-builder, really... just a lech), and that Kirkpatrick never, refers to the girl as his wife in any of his own writings. But a beautifully written book with lots of really interesting peripheral details.

I'm really sorry, I'm veering off track here. This isn't a book review site. It's a site about boondogglous travels. My only point is, the whole thing deals with the Nizams, or Mughal monarchs (Dad and I were talking about it, and can't figure out why they were called "Nizams" in Hyderabad and "Nawabs" everywhere else) of Hyderabad, and their political dealings. And here they are, the Nizams, entombed in marble. Pretty cool, right? I'm a dork...



On an unrelated note, we saw a pretty for-real Buddhist statue on an island in a lake in the city as well. Very green.



And early the next morning, no more bullshit. We hit the road!



My first day of driving, I was laughin' (did I say that right, Benji? Apparently when you're a 'roo, you say things that are a breeze are "laughin'"). Driving the rick is like driving a motorscooter, which I've never done, but you can just imagine how easy that is. It's like one of those 21-speed bikes with the sweet handlebar gear shifts, but the handbrake is actually a clutch and the real brake is a footpedal. You follow that? In any event, I'm a master rickshaw-walla at this point. You need a ride to Cafe Coffee Day, Carter Road? Wanna pick up some Masala Papad up in Santa Cruz West? Too drunk to drive home from Bollywood Spinners night at Club Enigma? I got you covered. Fifty rupees goodpricespecialforyou!