Blur_Girl

Where I dump photos and musing from travels in India, Hyderabad, Goa, Dubai, Delhi, Beijing, Hong Kong, Nanjing, and some other places I'll fill in later.

In Shanghai RIGHT NOW, good news, Tumblr isn’t banned yet! (I think so anyway, this is the first time in weeks I’ve had good enough internet to even see this site, much less past  world’s biggest firewall.) My other social stuff? Oh hells no, I get redirected straight to China Unicorn. Sadly, those are the sites I’m more chatty on. 

I’ll have to steal the husband’s VPN later on & see what’s going on in the rest of the world but at least now I can catch up on photo posting here.

Off to find dinner & batteries for my keyboard.

This commercial is for watching cricket & it would totally suck were it not for the godly presence of the man in white. 

Thanks to this blog for always being on top of the SRK .gifs.

(Source: kkkg)

Oh, Hyderabad, I missed you. I was sad to miss one of your biggest religious festivals, even if I was hiking in the HImalayan foothills and discovering how little I liked Delhi. 

Thank you neighborhood for being awesome and having such a great Ganesh Stature. 

Hyderabad prides itself on its street food, especially biryani and Haleem, a meat stew specially prepared for the month of Ramadan. This is the best place in the city to get haleem. I wasn’t able to photograph it due to sudden downpour, but the bottom floor was packed with a sea of men waving rupees, all trying to get food to bring home. 

Ramadan in an old Islamic city. I’m sure I could touch up the light in these picture if I had the patience, but I’m not trying to show how good a photographer I’m not, sorry. 

I was walking up Laad Bazaar when the sun set. As if by magic, the vendors suddenly all had cut up fruit on their carts and people holding trays of sample foods appeared. Women were moving scarves and masks off their faces, drinking water, their children happily eating sweets. 

To take a peek through Mecca Masjid was to see that huge courtyard packed to the brim with families sitting quietly while children ran everywhere. 

Final Four Weeks

I should have told our children we were leaving India a month earlier. They’re outside right now, taking pictures of where we live, starting to make the change in their own heads that we’re leaving home here. I don’t know that they really understand the epic huge trek we’re taking them across Asia in a few short weeks. I really don’t know if they’ll enjoy it. In all honestly, they haven’t been the biggest fans of living here. Indians adore children, maybe just a little too much if you’re a “small baby” girl with red curly hair.

My life is all lists now and trying to not have regrets about what I wasn’t able to get done here. The biggest reason I wanted to live here I did: I wanted to SEE everything I could.

Plus, y’know, living in a land where Shah Rukh Khan looks down on me from many a billboard never gets old, that man is Godly.

Photo is on St Mark’s Place in Bangalore.

V & I at Hussain Sagar, soaking wet in that special India Monsoon way. 

V & I at Hussain Sagar, soaking wet in that special India Monsoon way. 

Indian Fire truck! (prolly only one I’ll ever see here) Taken at Lalbagh Botanical Gardens, Bangalore.

Indian Fire truck! (prolly only one I’ll ever see here) Taken at Lalbagh Botanical Gardens, Bangalore.

This is from way back, but it’s now my husband’s avatar pic due to its awesome signage. 

This is from way back, but it’s now my husband’s avatar pic due to its awesome signage. 

I was going to write a scathing, snarky post about how I’m sad to miss one of my favorite weeks in San Francisco; the week of Burning Man when all the self indulgent rich drive or fly or (I know a guy) even bike to Black Rock City, freeing up parking spaces and lowering the queues to eat and drink in The City’s bars. Turns out I can’t do the subject justice, too exhausting to hate on something I am so profoundly alienated from.