Romancing trains (Part 1): Hyderabad and Anantagiri hills

It started with a 14 hr daytime train journey. Day, mind you – not night. How did I spend it? I prayed for it not to rain.

And miraculously, it didn’t rain too much or for too long when we made our way from Bombay to Hyderabad in the daylight hours. The train went through the scenic Pune-Lonavla route. Lonavla is already beautiful place, and the rains made it even more so. Mountain after mountain covered in forests or bright green grass, punctuated by the occasional waterfall. Many who have been to the Himalayas will say that any other mountains will pale in comparison. But the Himalayas are dark green and rich brown, with varying levels of white depending on how high up you are. Here, it is bright green, almost fluorescent. These mountains may not be lofty and awe-inspiring, perhaps, but they’re inviting. It made me want to pull the chain, get off the train and run through the grass.

Hills and mists are our best friends. 

After Pune, the landscape was more urban, and so we looked for other forms of entertainment. We played Hangman (a game of guessing words) and Bollywood (same as Hangman, but with Bollywood films), but it’s Cows and Bulls that really kept us busy. It’s an easy game – you think of a three-digit number (without repetitions) and have the opponent guess it. If a digit is in the right place, it’s called a ‘bull’ and if it’s not, then it’s called a ‘cow’. We tried to invent new variations of it – like having four digits instead of three (makes it insanely long, and conversely more luck-based), allowing repetitions (too complicated and not worth the effort). Finally, we came to the conclusion that the standard three-digit version was the best.

The countryside was back outside our windows now. Fields after fields, growing crops that my city-bred eyes could not recognize. The last time I was in Kerala, I learned to recognize some food crops, but there are still many I don’t know. My grandfather was, and still is in some ways, a farmer. My father and his siblings grew up in a village in Palakkad. Father was never short of stories from his childhood. They were everyday stories to me at the time – stories of which vegetables grew in which season, of how feet could get stuck in mud at the bottom of ponds and how he had to help dig a well before an exam. Now, all these years later, I wish I had written them all down somewhere.

I was staring out, wondering if I would become a farmer someday, when I saw deer! It was a small herd, jumping over a hedge between the fields. The train was passing too fast to even think of taking photographs. I immediately told my friend about it, and she was skeptical. Maybe they were goats? And suddenly she directed my gaze outside.

There was another herd, moving with a grace that is so peculiar to wild animals. They had a pinkish-orangish-brown hide, and I couldn’t see spots or antlers from the distance*. When I saw them, it struck me that the word “prance” was made just for deer. It's just as well that there are no pictures - I hope it motivates you to see them live!

Hyderabad, at last!

It's taller than it looks.

We finally got off at Begumpet station in Hyderabad, went home and slept the journey off. The next day was spent on a culinary tour with our friends in the city – biryani from Shah Ghouse, Irani chai and biscuits from Nimrah and country chicken, brain fry(!) and ragi mudda from a Rayalseema specialty restaurant called Kritunga. We took breaks in between the eating to climb up to the gallery of Charminar, and later took a walk around Husain Sagar lake.

“It’s not tall enough”, complained the friend. We were looking at a 291-ft flagpole with the Indian flag fluttering from it at the banks of the lake, erected to commemorate two years of Telangana’s statehood. Turns out they wanted to make it taller, but the AAI didn’t allow it. The distance and the relative size of it made it look like it was fluttering in slow motion. ‘Saare jahaan se achcha’ and ‘Vijay vishwa tiranga pyaara’ unwittingly leapt to my lips, thanks to all the days spent in the school choir – or “assembly”, like we called it.

While walking, two guys on a bike slowed down to pass comments. What sort of achcha jahaan was this? I got annoyed and yelled an abuse at them, and then instantly regretted it. My friend pointed out that the wiser thing would be to note down the vehicle number and report it to the police. I’m going to keep that in mind for next time.

The next day, we drove down to Anantagiri hills, which is about 70 kms off Hyderabad. After some hunting around, we had a surprisingly good breakfast of bhatoore and some yellow gravy from a dhaba on the way. We ditched the car and then trekked for some time. It was an uneventful, but pleasant trek. There was a path for the most part. Even when we abandoned it and went into the woods, we came back to the trail easily enough. My wish of getting lost in a forest did not come true, sadly. Neither did we see any animals, not even snakes. There was plenty of lichen, though.

No, I wasn't thrown up onto the tree.

We wandered for a while and then came upon a tree. It looked like it could be climbed, and so of course we had to try. My friend, who is light and athletic, was the first candidate. There was no handhold whatsoever till 7ft up, from where the trunk branched into two. She climbed onto the hands, and then shoulders of our sporting companions. She got a knee up, but then lost her grip and promptly fell backwards. 

She was saved in a rather filmi way, with one of the guys even scraping his hand badly in the process. So he was out. The other guy couldn’t try because there was no one he could climb on. So it came down to me. Apparently, it was okay if I couldn’t manage to climb up, because...

"We can even throw you up."

It didn't come to that. I managed to scramble up, thanks to some willing hands and shoulders. It’s probably the fourth tree I’ve climbed in my life, so you can see why it’s a big deal.

(... Continued in Part 2)

* P.S. - (If anyone knows what deer they might be, please leave it in the comments)