Quote by Riane Menardi, upon tasting her gigantic Monsoon Malabar at a super cool coffee shop, Mocha, that we found in Banjara Hills. Upon our arrival back home, everyone should expect an amazing Riane/Allyn coffee shop made of Riane's traveling coffee tasting abilities and my entertainment/traveling interior antique decorating skills.
So, I haven't put pics up lately.
Recently...
We took a WILD bus/train/Buddha Lake/random Horticulture gathering/Hard Rock Cafe/penthouse club adventure. At the train station, we saw a movie in the making!!! We are still wondering how they are going to make all of the viewers disappear... they were jumping the railroad tracks to get over there (ahem Riane and Ming...)
On the way, we found more animals I couldn't save.
The bamboo booth wanted a picture of us, even though they don't look that happy to be taking a picture with us. Going straight into the "People who want pictures with us" album.
We will start charging soon. Is that bad? Are we... selling ourselves?
Trying street food....
In the Old City with the couch surfers, I found some of my favorite people.
The bean men and their colorful carts of colorful beans!! I asked him if I could take this picture... He did the Indian head nod, which I took for yes. He doesn't appear to be thinking the same. This was right after an Indian journalism student on a field trip asked us if he could take our picture for his school paper...
The Couch Surfers league of Hyderabad.
Vinny, fashion designer whose name I forgot that ordered all of our spicy food and got us an auto ride back for only Rs. 200!!! and happy Anand. They told us that they had never had so many people stare at them in their lives, that we were such celebrities. Also, that we should never go anywhere without them because we are that bad at bartering. They are adorable and we will be hanging out with them again asap.
Let's just talk about this amazing dance concert for a second.
Here is what Riane says about me:
"My roommate is the queen of local entertainment. She knows about every artsy event in Hyderabad, and I have no idea how she does it. Needless to say, when she’s got her game face on, there’s never a dull moment. I love it.Her prowess came in handy this week (I’ve lost track of my weekdays) when we went to see a MOBILE DANCE PERFORMANCE on a 500-year-old tomb."
Right. I like being in the know and going to performances. So we saw a mobile dance performance (after we just walked right in - the name "Mr. Raju" got us straight through without tickets or anything...) on 500 year old tombs in India on a weekday for free.
And all we could say was, "Wow. We are sitting in chairs looking up at huge tombs getting ready to follow lights around to the other various tombs where the performers will sneakily be moving and we have to follow the stampede of photographers and viewers in circles around tombs to see them dance and omg. This is exactly the type of thing you hear about and can never imagine doing."
There we were, in Hyderabad, watching a world class modern dance company from Bangalore perform "For Pina..." an homage to deceased German Tanztheater choreographer Pina Bausch on these tombs:
(thanks, flickr friend Jyoti PB and Google image finder!!)
except that there are lots more of them.
Being a mobile dance performance where strangely enough, audience elbowing participation comes in handy, Riane and I took matters into our own hands - we decided we would just run around the back of the main tomb and make it to the seats on the other side before the mass of people all trying to smoosh down one small set of stairs could get there. In this manner, we were able to see closeup the men dancers dancing in arches on far away tombs, lit up by amazing lighting effects and the women sitting on a free standing arch, and the artistic director dancing and throwing rice around behind a screen with graphic art splashing across it, and then as we moved to the final location in our sneaky way....
we nearly had 2 backstage collision with the various dancers! Lucky for us, they were nimble and quick and slightly confused by our presence and so they jumped out of our way, we jumped off of their stage and everything went on as normal.
Sometimes, movement loses you and you zero in, mesmerized by just one person or the movement of a dress or the sketch mind sketch of movement that needs to be remembered, replicated, or you open your eyes wide and take in everything. And this time, taking in everything - the dancers, the costumes, the interactions, the reactions, the movement, the lighting, the hanging speakers, the bizarre music, the audience, the absolutely amazing venue of ancient tombs in India - can't be explained.
And then sometimes, we just chill. And go out for birthday parties in India where we eat mexican in swanky hotels with heated outdoor pools and get free cake by sneaky Indian waiters that learn our names and put both sparklers and the birthday girl's name on the cake!!
hahahah Totally excited for roomie/cake timeeee.
For some reason India = we can eat desserts all of the time and not exercise.
This is not fair, India. Riane and I would appreciate it if you would tone it down on the sweets. Saying "no" is much harder when it is all just given to you.
And we join soccer teams where our coach, Ihab, is the ex-captain of the Yemen National Football team and also getting his Ph.D in Linguistics while his wife and 3 children wait for him in Yemen.
We took team pics before our big win:
Cheesin? Sprawly hair?
This was a 20 min. photo shoot...
Up to tonight - Nicole, at Mocha, the new fav. coffee hangout in Banjara Hills:
Soon enough you will be seeing the two of us on Glee. We both love the show and musicals A LOT and with open auditions happening... we are planning an awesome video to submit that so far involves water buffalo (or at least their dung,) indian clothing, an auto rickshaw, and Indians who love jumping into scenes and dancing as if they were part of Bollywood. We aren't actually sure where to find these people... but Bollywood is so huge here, we don't think it will be a problem to make our own musical with the locals.
Quick sidenote on a few more things I have realized that I know:
mechanical pencils don't exist. but pen pencils do!
You must say pen pencil or they don't give you what you need. It still isn't what you need, so next time you go to India, take your own pencils with nice sturdy erasers. Shall I say that I am learning the hard way?
All of the cars here have backing up songs. Like Happy Birthday, or Twinkle twinkle little star. When you hear the faint tinkling of a familiar song (to you - someone had to tell a professor here that his backup song was Happy Birthday) it means that you should probably move.
"Take out" isn't a known term. "Take away" is. When waiters say "take away?" your food will come back to you.
India is a brofest.
anddddddd p.s.
Riane just posted a lotttt of pictures on FB because she got the downloader to work around the proxies.
So, be a creeper, add her, and look at all of her awesome pictures from our time in Delhi.
We are going to Warangal tomorrow, a 4 hour trip to see the Temple of a Thousand Pillars.
More pics and adventures to come!
