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.