Hyderabad !!

I once again take the dreaded hyderabad evening traffic head on and weave my way through to the skoda showroom. For the first time in my life in India, I get a service ON TIME. Not only that they called me exactly 5 minutes before 6:00 PM, the scheduled delivery time, to inform that the car is done.

The car is returned back squeaky clean with every problem fixed. It roars as I step on the gas and head to my "5 star" hotel. We quickly pack our stuff and "check out". Checking out here is just tossing the key back to the bored guy watching some cheap gyrating actors on the TV.

Kaps calls to inform his location and offers to come over if required. My masochistic tendencies again play up and I decided to drive through the city traffic again to go and meet him wherever he is. He is at a friend's place and again we ask hundreds on the way to find the place. I drive into this gated community and there it was, the famous AP11 -69. The Red RS look-alike Rider.

Kaps looks at me and yells. "Kenny, is this how you look? Why dont you put up your pic on the social networking site?".. "Its too risky", i reply back. Risky for what is something i dont know.

He introduces me to Rahul his bulky "Passat obsessed" friend. Rahul quickly asks where we would like to go and in the same breath offers a single option. I agree without even hearing a word. I add, "I am ok wherever as long as I am not driving".. We take Kaps car and we drive down to this ice cream shop. On the way I am shown all the famous cars and car drivers living in hyderbad. We also stop by a building gate where the infamous unbeatable skoda driving chick lives. We all roll our windows and gasp, "WOW"..

3 icecreams for us and a bunch of manikchands for Kaps. Being a perfect host, he picks the tab for the icecreams and I pay for his manikchand.
Inquisitive Kaps asks what i do for a living etc. I feel he wanted to know what profession allows you to be a nut case to drive across india in your car. I tell him what I do and he is impressed, I spice my profession a bit and he goes wow. I am impressed at myself by now.

Rahul gets a call from home and we decide to get back quickly. We go back to Rahul's apartment where my car was parked. We also check out Rahul's Passat and hear a few escapades he had with it.

We all then decide to call it a day and wave goodbye. Kaps would be accompanying me for a few miles before splitting off towards his direction. We stop at a gas station before that and click loads of pictures of our cars.
It was getting late for us. The next destination is Nagpur and its quite far. We wave him goodbye and I get on NH7 which will take me to Nagpur. I make myself comfortable in my seat, load a few music CDs and I set the temperature. I stop at the city limit and I take one last picture of our Silicon Valley's skyline.

End of Leg 1

The first day began almost 18 hours later than the earlier decided time. Like any god fearing religious person, the journey began with a visit to the local deity to help me restraint myself from crushing the morons i would be meeting in my trip.
The route, finally, was agreed to be - Chennai, Vijayawada, Hyderbad, Nagpur. From there depending on the timelines adherence we would decide on the route.
Balu & I took a short nap in the evening after the last scrumptious chennai meal that we had at a local restaurant. As expected we woke up wondering if its too early or too late to start. Reluctantly we packed the stuff and shoved it into our car. Not realizing our blunder we had a string of visitors "wishing" us luck, of course at the same time shamelessly demanding some "kaas" for their problems.
The dhobi, the driver, the car cleaner, the maid, the gardner, the auto guy and finally the landlord's help.
We quickly gave them 'red each and decided to leave before we get showered more blessings.
The first half of the journey was nothing short of awesome. My one finger royal salute to all those who suggested not to travel at night. The road was perfectly lit, least traffic and the weather was just awesome. The coast line and railway line to your right, gave you the perfect view that you wanted at the start of your journey.
3 tea breaks for the 480 km trip to vijayawada and we touched river krishna bank with less than 5 hours of driving. A short one hour nap and then began what could be described aptly as the mother of all crappy roads. Vijayawada to Hyd is a one lane each side road without any divider and the roads have deep pits on each side. This 240 kms trip took us more than 8 hours to complete. To give you a probability math, we encountered 7 major accidents in this stretch. I will upload the pics of all of these accidents when i am back home.
Nearing Hyd we stopped at the famous Punjabi dhaba to taste the authentic andhra punjabi cusine. To be polite, I would just say that it killed the appetite for the day.
I called up Kaps in Hyd to let him know I was in the outskirts and would soon be there. I enquired for the skoda service center address to check my car. Little did I know that this short trip to the service center will make hyderbad earn the tag of most rude city in India. 63 auto drivers had to be asked till one finally agreed to show us the way to Sanath Nagar where the skoda service center was located. Hari, the manager was kind enough to get my car serviced on urgent basis and hand it over before 6:00 PM (I gave it at 2:00 PM). I however think that Kaps might have used some of his muscle/brain/contacts/strings to get my car preferrential treatment.

As I type, I am at the internet cafe below my motel trying to kill time until 6. I will probably meet up with Kaps if he gets free by evening.
A more detailed description of my first leg of journey would be posted as soon as I find time.

Before I sign off. Thank you guys for all the wishes that poured into my mail box. In return, I will let you all savor the awesome pics that I clicked on the way. :D

Ciao !
Satix