This photo above was taken on my last day in Hyderabad, obviously outside a McDonalds. McDonalds in India is quite a bit different, by the way- all the menu items are noted with either a green or red dot, indicating whether or not the item is vegetarian. (One good looking vegetarian option was a falafel burger, but I didn’t try it. Did I really come all this way just to eat at McDonalds? Well, kind readers, rest assured that I’m kicking myself now. (I did try some chocolate shake though, which was excellent. Hey, look at that, embedded parentheses!!!))

Anyway, the time has finally come. This is my last India entry, as of this trip anyway. I thought I’d take a brief moment here for we three of our little band.

After approximately 24 hours combined on the road, we entered Goa, welcomed by warm and humid weather, lush vegetation, and, of course, the massive multilingual ‘WELCOME TO’ signs every Indian state has. We headed towards the Southern part of the state, often described as the ‘least touristy’ area in Goa. This is a bit of a misnomer- all of Goa is pretty much tourist saturated, but from what we heard the Southern part would be more of a rustic beach escape, as opposed to the beach cities which are more popular in the other areas. The plan was to head down to the beach for a night, pack up in the morning and head north, which would include catching Goa’s version of Carnival in Panaji.

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?

I found myself totally swarmed by Indian children. If I turned, they ran around in front of me. If I tried to back up, I found myself unable, being completely surrounded by them. They started making demands to me in English, and it seemed the only English they seemed to know involved asking me to take their picture. My only means of escape seemed clear: I started to get down and snap away, hoping their photographic hunger would soon be satiated, but nay, I was a fool- their hunger only grew. They soon grew tired of group pictures, and each child wanted an individual picture. As I tried to comply, other children would rush in to sabotage efforts of their fellows’ solo photo attempts, and immediately ask for their own solo shot afterwards. It was a whirlwind of treacherous individualism gone horribly, horribly wrong, and I was stuck in the middle of it all.