But...
Mr. Abhishek Sir took us to Ramoji Film City, which claims to be the largest film complex in the world.
It doesn't claim to be one of the strangest places on Earth, but I'll give it that.
It is apparently in the Guinness Book of World Records.
We had trouble getting there because of the riots happening in downtown Hyderabad and the street was blocked, so we had to wait until the roads were opened but after that, I don't remember a thing. I slept the entire time.
We got the star package, and so we got BALLCAPS
and then we rode around in this comfy air conditioned bus while a man on a microphone pointed out the windows and told us, this is where we film if we want to be in rajasthan, this is the field where we film sad songs and dance numbers, this is where we film south Indian town scenes, this is where we film if we want to be in London, etc.
We ate lunch at this lavish 5 star hotel on the grounds because 1.) we had the start package and 2.) because they directed us rather bluntly that that hotel was where we had to eat by calling Abhishek over the microphone "And this, Mr. Abhishek Sir, is where you will be eating lunch."
In front of the whole van. He was mortified, we were extremely amused.
We walked down Honeymoon Lane
(That's Abhishek and the white glowing is Riane's magnificently clad head)
and saw a Wild Wild West Show (did YOU know that India has their own concept of what the Wild West is like?)
The most unfortunate part was when there was a chase scene around the plastic fake horses... and a man was supposed to get his head stuck between the tail and the butt of this horse. If that had been real life...
And here, we also saw a traveling man we met in Varkala (we told him where to stay at North Cliff) watching this Wild West performance, too. Small world, eh?
Oh! We also got to do India's version of Disney's "It's a small world after all."
We were the only Americans there - we couldn't have gotten lost if we tried. We were herded everywhere and we had to be there at the time they said to be there. They even took Abhishek's number and called him if we were taking too long somewhere.
Right and so we had these coupons we had to use and we did all of that and saw a few bizarre things in the process.
Wtf is this?
(he didn't know, but we had actually locked him in)
We were so addicted to our hats. Souvenirs! Woo!
FUNDUSTAN!? I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR THIS PLACE ALL MY LIFE!
we were amused
Abhishek wasn't - he had left
What you don't see is us suffocating in the top of the shoe because the door at the top was locked.
"Milk-o-fun"
?
And then we left.
And it was happy.
