Delhi and Agra were cool, and the Taj was awesome. It’s so impressive on so many levels. No point in me regurgitating a bunch of info that’s already been written a thousand times; go read about the Taj Mahal on Wikipedia if you’d like. I will, however, post pictures I took that have no doubt been taken millions of times. The pic shown above, for example.

You’ll probably hear from me once again upon my return to the US.

For anyone who hasn’t gone and might go in the future, there’s three options to get there:

1. Fly to Agra. It’s a small airport and they don’t have many flights, so you may be out of luck, depending on which airport you’re coming from and how far in advance you book your flight.
2. Fly to Delhi and:
1. Take a train to Agra – make sure you get your train ticket in advance, it sells out quick;
2. Take a taxi to Agra – I’ve heard this will take at least three hours, possibly more depending on traffic. It’s also more expensive than the train.
3. Drive to Agra. So, if you’re driving a car yourself, in India, then I hope you’re from India originally which means you know what your doing. If you’re not from India, don’t drive a car here. Please. And depending on where you’re driving from, this could be a loooooong drive.

Looking forward to posting some nice pics upon my return.

Here’s a run-down of the different Indian restaurants I’ve tried so far:

1. Our Place – An open air restaurant with great Indian food. We got there a bit before the restaurant opened, which meant we were subjected to the mosquito fumigation fog while being seated. No big deal. The surroundings were really nice, with lots of plants and grass. It was my first Indian meal. I feel like we must have tried half of the menu
2. Fusion9 – Features a mix of several different cuisines; everything from Italian to Indian to Chinese to Thai. A nice, up-scale place with great food and full bar. I’ve tried the Thai chicken curry and the chicken tikka masala, both were excellent.
3. Angeethi – A themed restaurant; Northern Indian cuisine, and very spicy. This was the spiciest meal I’ve had so far during my trip. It was also very good. One of their specialties which we tried is skewered chicken, among other things. They bring the chicken out on a big sword-shaped skewer, and slide it onto your plate.
4. Taj Krishna – One of the fanciest hotels in the city, with a wonderful buffet served on Sundays. We had the buffet, which was very good and very expensive; the most expensive meal so far. It was nice to take a break from the Indian food with other things like broccoli grautin, sauteed mushrooms and artichokes, etc.
5. Ginger Court – Your standard Indian cuisine, which we ordered for delivery to the office. I particularly enjoyed their stuffed naan and dal tadka.

Anywhere we go, it’s recommended we try the biryani, which is a type of spiced rice dish. Hyderabad is famous for their biryani. I think it’s good, but I’m more of a bread fan, so naturally I love most of the naan. I think Fusion9 had my favorite so far, but most of them have been great.

Update: the above are all Hyderabad restaurants, as opposed to the entire country of India.

The flights and layover to get here were pretty exhausting. I flew out of San Francisco to Seoul, South Korea, which took about 13 hours. We stopped there briefly to pick up/drop off a few people, then headed to Singapore, which took another 6 hours. Once I was there, I had to wait 17 hours for my flight to Hyderabad, which took 4 hours. That totals up to about 40 hours, which doesn’t include the time I spent before leaving the San Francisco airport, and the time it took to get through customs and get my bags when I arrived in Hyderabad.

The Singapore airport was really cool. Out of all the airports to be stuck in, it certainly could be worse. They have high def plasmas everywhere with sports, etc, they’ve got free Xbox 360 stations and free internet access stations all over the place. There’s also a very large mall right in the middle of the airport. So I kept myself busy. And I slept.

Last night I had my first Indian meal. We(me and 5 other expats) went to a place called “Our Place”. It’s one of the best places to go for Indian food in Hyderabad. I really enjoyed the food. Here’s a review online for more info.

I might be going on a weekend trip this weekend, but I’m not sure yet. I’ll find out tomorrow and keep you posted.