India 2007 - Day Twelve
Things are winding down. This is my last night in the hotel. I've been taking pictures here for almost 2 weeks and today I was either lucky, or experience in the setting helped a bit. These shots are a slice of Hyderabad -- my slice -- the one I see every day.
Well, almost every day. This is the first time I've seen a traffic stop in progress. It's a universal language.
This is a traffic stop in the making. By my guess there are 9 passengers and a driver in this taxi.
I've tried to show a few pictures of some of the poor, very poor people along the route to work. This is as poor as it gets. He's there in the same spot every day.
Hyderabad also has a dog problem -- wild dogs, that is. In the last few days a mom and her three pups found a spot to sleep in the 105+ degree heat, amongst the granite boulders in the garden outside the office. Mom is on the left.
But it's not all bleak and grim, traffic and overcrowding and desperate poverty. Next to that is the promise of change and growth. A new office building sits beyond aluminum barracks housing the laborers who bake in this heat to build them. There's the stone upon which Hyderabad is literally built, and the flowering bushes and trees that dot nearly every street. The larger city beckons beyond. I haven't truly seen Hyderabad -- I've seen two end points and the route in between. It can be harsh but it's also beautiful.
Another spectacular sunset was growing tonight as I left the office. I couldn't get an angle on it -- there was always something in the way. My bad luck, but there was a magnificent end to the day for someone in Hyderabad.