Hyderabad (not exactly) blues.

Looking back at all the period I spent in Hyderabad, one thing I can tell you from it for sure is that, that Hyderabad is one city which makes you fall in love with it.Yeah yeah I know this is pretty mehh statement to start the post which sounds so obvious.
But I am not a man of many words and neither I am good at expressing a deep feeling, so I would suggest you to better believe this :).
Sure it gets very hot and unnaturally rainy, but then again, you are in middle of India where this kind of atmosphere is not unexpected.
It started with few good friends that I found after coming here and slowly we started enjoying this place. To say that I had fun from very starting will be like betraying my true feelings. Yes,I did get bore to the core initially, missed Pune like anything , called my parents and friends in pune almost daily out of boredom. Add to that the (in)famous bench of IT companies and you have a perfect self kill weapon. But then you can't get bored beyond a limit and start enjoying whatever is there around you. Now, what do you do in that case? Yes, you explore.Especially when you have this much time.I did same and Hyderabad did not disappoint, not at all.
This city has everything that a good city should have ideally and then something more.
It's combination of modernness and old world charm is amazing.It is almost as if, the old city has been forgotten by time and then suddenly some architect woke up and realized that the city needs to grow, with time , so he built new-age constructions all around the old city.Fantastic.
Only city I can recall which has similar characteristic is Pune.(Considering that I have lived in only 3 cities in all of last 23 years, this is pretty gross overstatement,but still... you get the drift!)

Charminar, In my opinion could be the most used, abused, visited, hyped, term and landmark in not only Hyderabad's but India's history.Here are some snaps for your pleasure.

and another one ,


When I first visited Charminar, I was pretty surprised by its location. The image I had in mind was totally different. I was hoping it to be a typical tourist spot, but as you can see it's not.
It is totally surrounded by shops, hotels, by lanes, roads etc, making it uniquely unique :).
It is so very important and so non-assuming at the same that it makes you wonder.Superb stuff.
I take a bow.The famous by lanes house the even more famous pearl jewellery shops.The typical Hyderabadi Hindi is at its epitome here.If you ever want to learn it, this is the authentic place.
These two pics certainly doesn't cut it. I will try to put better and bigger pics sometime.

Here is another of Hyderabad's numerous famous spots : Golkonda fort.



A staircase in the fort :


Hyderabad from Golkonda's point of view :)
(credit for this supreme snap goes to Bitterscotch)


Magnificent Buddha statue installed in Hussain sagar :


In and around Lumbini park :

Note , people in above snap are not at all related to me.


But in this snap yes these are us.

And finally me, at Golkonda fort's alley that leads to main staircase towards top.

I can almost here some of you saying "And ramoji film city?? ".It is there, still for sure.And I have been there,husshhhh. But sadly I was not carrying camera or camera phone at that time.
However to be frank, I will say Hyderabad has far more spots that are far more interesting than Ramoji film city(with total due respect, Ramoji film city is a wonder in itself and a must watch for all especially if you are a film buff).
My point is that, If you are coming to Hyderabad only for film city you are missing a great deal.
This almost brings up the rear end of the post, but where is my bike? yes, it is in very good shape, in fact better than ever. The thing is, all these snaps were taken before I got the bike transported here.I guarantee, next post will see some of my bike.
Keep riding.

A long hiatus,and back.

I agree.3 posts in 9 months is not called as regular blogging.I agree I have been very lazy to update this thing. Have I lost the drive?the interest?the purpose? Not really.But hey things happen, things change, don't they? Starting afresh, I see today is a very bright and sunny day.So there you all rise and shine.If someone of you still have my blog bookmarked down there,please click on it,I am alive if not exactly kicking asses :).
To begin with, my bike is here in Hyderabad finally.Brought her here in June via VRL transports in a truck as there is no direct train service from my town to Hyderabad.Courier was also ruled out due to astronomical charges.Only options left were 1.Transport and 2.Load it in Volvo bus' storage compartment as suggested by some.
I tried option number 2 first.It was only after lots of efforts and a ugly scratch on tank, that I realized this was wrong option indeed.
P200 simply refused to go in to loading bay of Volvo semi sleeper.Extra height of the bike being the culprit.My heart sank when I saw the way they were cramming my bike in.But the coolies were confident - "Pulsar jaati hai saab" they said.
But this Pulsar did not.Next they deflated the tires. Still it refused to go beyond tank portion.And then it happened - the tank's upper part scraped against the sill of that compartment, removing about an inch of Teflon coat and some color, I closed my eyes.
I remember my dad told them to pull out the bike and went to cancel the bike's ticket.(Yes, you will need to buy a ticket for one seat if you,ever, plan to transport your bike this dreadful way.)
So, finally before the bike got crumpled,totaled it was out on the road.Dad took it to a cyclewallah and filled in air and rode it back home.He said I will now send it through some transport service. This happened in April.After that something or other kept him busy and it was not until the mid June that bike reached here safely.
In the meantime, previous post gathered a lot of attention and many people mailed me with their questions and doubts.
The first and foremost being "dude where are the pics?I can see some empty boxes only or is it just me? ".
No its not just you.
And answer to this question is "I have no clue". I remember posting some pics over there for sure.But they are not showing now.
Second most asked question(which is actually the most asked question.ever.)"Are you serious about the mileage thing? Mine never returns above 34kmpl".
well I am in a fix.Its not that I lied. In answer to this highly spirited question I would say "ummm yeah..i mean no.why yes".Or did you buy your bike on particularly bad day?Not actually.
This particular post can be found here.
I would like to let you know some insider knowledge after all this time. Yes, the bike did return 48kmpl.But it was 4-lane newly laid highway.Wind totally standstill.(standstill?).Not much traffic.Me at perfect peace with whale lot of time.Tires inflated more than enough.And cycle parts nicely oiled.
So I did what generally doesn't happen.I rode at constant 65kmph almost all of the time.
I don't think any one of you does this regularly.In fact I doubt some of you have never known to ride it sanely.
So,I would let you know on more thing. 34-38 Kmpl is perfectly alright a mileage for this machine in normal riding situation.If you are getting anything above it, you are truly a good rider.
Now something about my own bike.The bike seems to be suffering from electrical phobia of some kind.First it was the starter relay,then the regulator and now the ignition coil that failed for no reason at all. Finding this ignition coil turned out to be a tough job. I could not get it in any service stations authorized by Bajaj. Thankfully at the same time I had to go to Pune. To my surprise both the Pro-Biking service stations did not have it.On the last day of my stay in Pune, I managed to procure a older,used one coil somehow from a friend.
This seriously makes me wonder.Is this part (called HT coil in their speak) so rare,that I couldn't get it in land of Bajaj itself?

Guess I have exhausted the words now, writing is surely not an easy job. Will keep all of you informed on whatever happened and happens in this great city.I am loving it already.
Keep writing,keep riding!