What to say about traveling to India for the first time? If you don’t have time to read through it all, the short of it is this:

the trip was amazing.

What stood out? Best to break it down:

The travel

It took a lot to get ready. Our office has a google doc of some of the important things to remember when traveling to India. This was useful, but besides that, there were a ton of other things to accomplish in the week before the trip:

• Get cash from the bank
• Check with Verizon, to ensure my phone works
• Get items from pharmacy like tums, pepto-bismol, melatonin
• Mow the lawn
• Laundry

How to manage all of these thing to do before the trip? I took a page from my friend Chad’s approach when he travelled to Disney World: break things down into smaller, day-by-day to-do lists, all before my 11pm Friday departure out of Charlotte.

After mowing the lawn and packing, charging all of my devices, playing one last game of memory with mercy, and saying goodbye to Rosie and Taylor who were going out for the night, I was ready to cover the 90 minute drive to Charlotte, along with a cup of coffee to help mess up my sleep rhythm and get ready to adjust to India time.

Check the forecast in India for the week to know what to expect:

The route was Charlotte to London (8 hrs)

London to Hyderabad (10 hrs).

Leave Charlotte at 11pm on Friday. Arrive in India at 5:20 am on Sunday.

My company was able to offer economy+ fare, and if it is feasible for any long trips you may have planned, jump on it. The upgrade was worth it.

What was the weather like in India?

This was the final forecast before leaving for the week:

After not sleeping the first flight, I took a melatonin and slept 8 of the 10 hours the second flight, so I was ready to GO upon arrival. Made it to the hotel around 7, hit up the hotel breakfast, pool, then a massage. Mike, who I was traveling with, had some issues with his back over the past couple years, so getting a massage was helpful.

Now might be a good time to talk about:

The food.

It’s awesome. Guy Fieri travels across the USA to go to flavortown. Well, we can one-up that mission, because flavor-town is actually in India. 

What did we eat?

Rather than be ignorant and just say “I don’t know, but it was good”, here is a partial list:

• Cashew nut upona
• Base bale bath
• Coconut Chutney
• Sambar
• Sprouts Idly, a carb eaten with sambar soup for breakfast. 
• Paratha (bread)
• Samosas – little meat filled, fried breakfast dumplings.
• Egg curry
• Bhaji
• Cholar Dal: made from a type of beans or something. 
• Suji ka halwa. This was really good; slightly sweet, like cream of wheat? 
• Dalia khichdi. 
• Lassi: almost like a milkshake
• Mango cream. 
• Chicken Biryani- the best dish in the town
• Peshawari Mutton
• butter chicken- very different than what the name seems to be.
• Pickled mango- my one food mistake of the trip.

Most of this list? Comes from the breakfast buffet at the hotel.

Putting small portions on my plate and going to town (think, hummus) the meals were great. On the last day, the chef came out to say good morning  and ask if there was anything I needed (great service!). He took one look at my plate, thought about making a correction, then settled by offering to re-make my plate because I prepared the Indian breakfast foods the wrong way. 

Our team, who I will share a bit about in a second, took great care of us. We got a chance to go to:

• Peshawar
• Broadway Brewery- saffron infused gin there was on point!
• Masterpiece International Buffet- beware of the pickled mango!
• Bawarchi- beware of fake bawarchi
• Crispy Crust- try the mango cream
• Skyhy – excellent apps. Sometimes open talent night if you play the guitar.
• 10 pounder pizza. Way better than 9 pounder.
• The hotel rooftop. It’s a great cricket-viewing setup.

Meal after meal, the flavors kept coming. One of my favorite parts was the dinner at Masterpiece. It was a team dinner, and they were sharing a bit about how much of our office is comprised of people from all around the country of India. I asked a bit about the food from the different areas, it was interesting to hear how many of the regions have their own types of oils used in cooking, and a variety of wheats used for cooking.

Compare that with the USA, where we only have a few types of oil, and mostly wheat flour, unless you want to spend an arm and a leg.

Time for some food porn:

Meal after meal, it was amazing. It made me think, in the U.S., our spectrum of major flavors goes from salty to sweet; at least, that is the way things our in our house. In India, the flavors were all over the place. It was as if my taste buds that never get used were getting a chance to shine. And after eating a lions share at every meal, I felt great after.

Except for the Lassi: this one messed me up. I think it was just too much dairy for the moment; but I would do it again.

Out of the whole week, there was only one, semi-dire event: eating a large spoonful of pickled mango.

As a normal, American person, one would think, “pickled mango? What’s the big deal?” Well, it is not just mangos in brine. It is a seasoning used with rice as a shortcut to add more flavor. Here is a link to the recipe if you are curious, but it was an intense shock of something salty, spicy, and sour all at the same time. For about 90 seconds, I didn’t know how this was going to play out. My part of the table went silent, but it was ok. The best I can compare it with is like eating the ginger and wasabi in a big spoonful at a Japanese restaurant. It’s not wrong, it’s just not right. If you are curious, here is a recipe for pickled mango

Food wasn’t the end of it. The best way to experience a country is to know the history, the sports, and the culture.

A museum, a cricket match, and a temple nailed that trifecta.

The fun things to do.

Wednesday of our stay was a national holiday in India. Vasavi and the team showed us through the Salar Jung museum, which housed a collection of artifacts owned by the King hundreds of years ago, and includes exhibits of:

• Miniature paintings
• Swords
• Porcelain
• Bronze and Marble statues
• Chinese and Japanese furniture, cups, art, etc. 
• Wood carving items from lots of cultures
• Walking sticks. Yes, this was fascinating. 

There are too many great items to share, but this was my favorite item of the day: a marble statue carved to look like a flowing veil. The detail was something I had never seen before:

There were too many great items from the museum to capture, but here are a few items:

But that’s not all: our company has a cricket team: you know, the British sport with a wicket? So we had to support our guys on Saturday as they played against another company for their fourth game of the season. It’s pretty dope: many IT companies participate (like Verizon, AMD processors, Dell, many others you may recognize). They have jerseys, and play on a field outside of the city. The fields are often converted farms that put together these great facilities, and lease them out to leagues that want to play cricket, and they were in great shape. They even professionally stream the games, complete with scores and replays. 

We were able to see about 90 minutes, but did I mention it was 108*? We were roasting, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to play in that heat. Storable India folks are a tough breed. 

The Temple of Equality was next on the list. It was new (only a couple years old) and gigantic. Cameras weren’t allowed inside, so not many pics to share. And we didn’t do the “audio guided tour”, so we were clueless about the 108 gods that we saw that day. 

But it was beautiful. And the sound of the buddha singing that melody over a speaker covered the area in serenity. Many of the “followers” (I am not sure the right word for people that work/live at a temple?) were much younger than I was expecting. 

The architecture was something unlike anything I had ever seen. Beautiful, intricate details are something that people stopped doing hundreds of years ago, or so I thought. Seeing so many details on such a new temple brought a different kind of energy to the place. 

We made it to the top where the buddha was sitting. Did I mention it was 109* or so? The temple requires shoes to be removed, so viewing the buddha on the white-painted walkway did burn my feet. As I am on the plane writing this, my feet still hurt a bit, but it’s fine. I would do it again.

The final stop for the day, and the final step for my whole week, was to see the official emblem of Hyderabad.

If you google Hyderabad, India (Not to be confused with Hyderabad Pakistan), an image of Charminar is going to come up. This is the four-spire muslim monument with a mosque on the top floor. It was built in 1591, and the official emblem of the city. 

Sometimes I have a hard time with large crowds. It can give me a bit of anxiety. Large crowds in the area, along without our awesome tour guide Aarshad, a little bit of dehydration, and lots of beggars, a quick lap of the monument was more than enough for me on that specific day.

It was a completely different part of the city. 

We stayed in the Westin, Hitech City. The Storable office is pretty close to the hotel. And this is just a small part of the city of Hyderabad, a population of 10 million. It is on a giant plain, and driving outside of the city reminded me of the dry, hilly parts of west Texas. 

The city is ancient. And after learning a small part of its history from the museum and talking with my coworkers, it seems the history of Hyderabad interweaves Hindu, Muslim, and British influences over hundreds of years. 

More recently, Tech has been moving in in a really big way. There are dozens and dozens of 20+ floor buildings under construction. Huge signs of companies you would recognize from across the world have signs strapped across the buildings the have been completed, the largest being Deloitte. 

People from all around the country are moving to Hyderabad and moving the industry forward, including most of my peers in the Storable office. 

What were you doing in India anyways?

Ok, this post has been about a bunch of touristy stuff. And yes, we did a good deal of that. But the reason for the trip was work, and we did a large amount of work.

I work at a company called storable, and we do software for self-storage units for a large marketshare across the country: around 60%. Think inventory, payment processing, access to facilities, auctions, etc. Now, we do the same for marinas, and are moving into the camping/RV vertical as well. It’s pretty cool.

Part of our project is being manned by our team in India, so this was a week to do some forecasting and planning, and more than anything, just get some FaceTime with our peers who we only see over zoom on a regular basis.

We did a week of reviewing, planning, Jira boards, projecting, collaborating, and anything else you can think of relating to the software development lifecycle. 

The bulk of our time was spent with Aarshad, who is on our team, and Vasavi, the product owner (think, “the boss”). Aarshad showed us all of his favorite places, and Vasavi was an amazing hostess who helped us all feel welcomed. She spent her day off showing us around town, and very much reminded me of my wife: works hard, is a great mom, values her faith, etc.

The other things

’m going to stay clear of saying “India was this” or “India was that”. It is a huge country, and I only saw a part of it. 

You know what I really liked about Visiting Hyderabad? The clothing. It was beautiful- there were so many colors, and not just boring western style clothing. 

The traffic seemed a bit chaotic at times- but most of the way through the trip, Mike pointed out: none of the cars have any dings or scratches in them. It is like they are all moving in the same direction, and understand the same rules. 

The language. India has 3000+ languages. How drop. That is astounding. In the office, people come from around the country, and there are two main languages spoken, Hindi and Bangali. But, around Hyderabad, many of the signs were in three languages: Hindi, English, and Bengali.

Finally, the post wouldn’t be complete without reflecting on the time Mike got on stage and did an impromptu song in Skyhy, while the band was finishing up their warm up. A core memory was created that night, and, Mike was pretty good: