On my last day in Pune I attended the morning ladies class. The class was run like a teacher training for a new group of teachers while those who taught last month supervised the training part. It was quite chaotic. There were about forty students compared to roughly 110 in August. After class Kathy and I had lunch at Shravan, dessert was delicious and I wished that I had eaten there a few more times this trip. Once home, I freshened up and squeezed the last few items in my luggage.
My taxi came around 3:30 and I was off to the airport. It was actually a very nice drive through a less developed part of Pune. There were pastures where cows grazed and blocks of houses built of stone here and there. The road didn’t have a lot of traffic and as a benefit there was less noise from honking. The Pune Airport is part of the Air force Base and upon approaching the AFB sounds from military jets filled the air.
The flight was slightly delayed but eventually the passengers we summoned and we headed down the hall and down onto the tarmac. Once they finished fueling the plane we were allowed to board. It was a small plane and I had a set of seats right next to a propeller. I found it fascinating that once we the plane had taken off the landscape below did not look any different than out any other plane window – well except maybe the desert. I arrived in Hyderabad close to the scheduled time and quickly retrieved my luggage. It was an easy and painless trip.
I spotted Siva, Kulo’s driver, past the corral of drivers seeking business people. He grabbed my luggage (21 kg-yikes!) and we headed to his car. The Hyderabad Airport is new, modern and very nice complete with a napping area and shower facilities. Kulo’s home was about a 45 minute drive from the airport and I couldn’t help but notice that there was little or no litter on the side of the road for a good part of the drive. The streets also had lines painted on them to divide the lanes though most of the time Siva drove straddling the line. Hyderabad has also erected several road blockades to control traffic which is highly regulated by traffic police. Several of the stoplights are outfitted with cameras to catch people violating traffic laws, though I can’t really speak about enforcement of the activity, and in some sections of town there are heavy duty speed bumps, sometimes six in a row.
By 9 p.m. I was at Kulo’s place. I sat down for a snack of dosa, then two, a third one arrived and I said I do not think I could eat anymore. “Oh you need to tell her to stop making them then,” Kulo directed me to inform his mother and he took the last one.
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