Goa was about 500 miles away, which, in States time is about 6 to 7 hours of driving, or about half that if you’re my father. Because of this, we planned on a short detour to some Mosque ruins, and then a direct drive to Goa. Leaving around 6:30 am that day, it seemed we’d be in Goa in time for a late dinner.

Driving out of Hyderabad was incredibly slow. Traffic in the outer areas of the city was fairly intense, even early in the morning. As soon as you’re even a little out of the city, you can sense an immediate change: the level of poverty was far greater just a short distance away, the tall buildings completely disappearing and being replaced by huts and shacks of varying construction materials. The poor road conditions and many vehicles kept us for a couple of hours before we started to get a good speed going.

Hyderabad had a lot of sites of interest, but we decided early on that we wanted to get a broader view of India. It’s a fairly diverse landscape after all, each area with its own unique languages, scenery, wildlife, and scents. (Especially scents. As Kalyan stated, ‘India is definitely a country of interesting smells.’ This was astutely pointed out as we passed within a mile or so of a truly acrid sugar rendering plant.) Since India is so large, we decided on a five day trip going to various points in South India, leaving North India for perhaps a future vacation. Following was a question of logistics: how would we travel?