spicy. seattle. ciao.: Charminar, Laad Bazaar, and Emissions from Car

My Saturday got off to a bit of a disappointing start. A bunch of people at work invited me to play in a cricket match, which I was really excited about. After I went to bed relatively early last night and woke up at 6:15 this morning, the match got canceled due to rain.

After heading back to sleep for a while, Brian, another Seattleite, and I headed down to the Charminar, the iconic landmark of Hyderabad. The Charminar is located in the "Old City," where Hyderabad was originally founded, now the predominantly Muslim area of town.

Getting out of our auto-rickshaw in front of the monument, we were immediately surrounded by dozens of children, half of whom were shouting things like, "hello," "bonjour," and "como estas" in an attempt to figure out where we were from, half of whom were grabbing our arms and pointing to their mouths indicating they wanted us to give them money for food. I quickly realized my mistake in engaging them and started walking straight to the monument; poor Brian was left behind.

It costs 5 Rs to see the monument, 100 Rs if you're not from India. We paid for that and a tour guide which, although I was initially skeptical of, turned out to be a wise investment. I learned things like (feel free to skip over these :-)

Charminar means four towers. Char is the Hindi word meaning four; minar is the Arabic word for tower (think minaret).
It was built to commemorate the "defeat" of the black plague.
There are four entrances to the Charminar, one of which has no steps. This was the King's entrance as he would arrive in a chariot of some sort.
There's a fountain in the middle of the Charminar. But, it used to actually lead into a tunnel that served as the escape route from a nearby fort.
The Charminar has a mosque on the third level, but it's now closed down because people would jump off of it in suicide attempts.
Just north of the Charminar, there is a plaza. From each direction, a road with an archway leads in. The one from the east was the royal entrance; the one from the west was the peasants' entrance; the one from the north was the fish entrance (where merchantsbrought in fresh fish to sell); the one from the south was the fruit entrance (where merchants brought in their fruit).
Just south of the Charminar is the second largest mosque in India.

The area around the Charminar is a bustling area. There's the pearl district (Hyderabad is renowned for its pearls), the Laad Bazaar (a market for bangles), tons of different shops, street vendors, etc... We walked around for a while in this area.

The most noteworthy story was trying to shop (or not shop) for bangles. Quick summary, bangles are these inflexible bracelets, typically worn by women of India. Their most common use, I think, is to symbolize matrimony. Anyway, I had no idea as to the worth of bangles so I dragged Brian into a shop to just see what it would cost.

First, imagine a shop that's about 5ft x 12ft. The walls are covered with bangles of every color. The salesman, who speaks only a little English, starts frantically grabbing bangles and handing them to Brian and me. Within about 30 seconds, Brian and I probably have about 80 of these in ours hands. The salesman is showing us bangle combination after bangle combination. We can't make sense of what's going on.

We start trying to hand our bangles back; nobody will take them. We set them down on a chair; some guy comes over and yells at us. We try handing them to him; he won't take them. We start forcing them into his hands; he gives us a funny look. Brian and I start trying to leave, but the salesman puts his hand into my chest, asking us to give him a chance on a price. We're cornered at this point, so we figure why not.

He offers us 12 of them (people tend to wear multiple ones) for like 1200 Rs (~$24). Having no real interest in these bangles, we both say no. The salesman starts slashing the price until he gets to like 600 Rs, at which point he asks me to make him an offer. Again, not really interested in them, I said I'd give him 50 Rs. He looked flabbergasted, saying that's an unreasonable offer. We eventually compromised on 120 Rs. It's pretty easy to bargain when you don't actually want what he's offering.

I wanted to keep walking around the shops, but Brian was getting hungry. So, we went in search of food. We ended up getting an auto-rickshaw to take us to Lumbini Park, situated at the southern end of the lake in the middle of the city. After lunch, we walked around the city for a few hours.

Big mistake. We were downtown and traffic there is unbelievably bad. So, bad that I was actually having trouble breathing from all of the pollution. We wandered around for a while before both of us got really grumpy and decided to take a cab home. But, now I'm home, showered, in my bed, and happy :-)

So, after today, I've decided that (1) the Charminar market area is the highlight of the city (2) I need to go back and (3) other than that area, there isn't really a good place to just "hang out" and get lost in.

Here are some pictures from today: