A lazy Saturday in Hyderabad

I love my mornings. One habit I brought back with me from the Himalayas is waking up early. I get up at 6:30am, turn my geezer on (hallelujah hot water!), and feel eternally grateful I can now take showers standing up, rather than squatting down under the faucet meant to fill up bath buckets.

Each morning, I do yoga outside, in my little garden (yes! -- a garden!!) and end the session with a meditation -- which now I look forward to instead of dreading. Then I cook myself some breakfast, and sit down to eat it outside on my porch swing, overlooking the flowers.

It's an amazing new apartment, really. I only have it for a couple of months, so I'm savoring every day. It was sad to leave Indira Heights, but I felt more than ready. I still love the location, overlooking Banjara Hills, with the sounds to prayer wafting through the windows. But two years had made it a little worse for wear, and continually being out of water was the last straw.

Cleaning 'ole Indira 202 out was like finding a time capsule of my first year in Hyderabad... back when I was in love with the apartment and everything was new and exciting. Cleaning out the drawers, I found tons of old relics from year 1, like the society page in the Hyderabad Times that friends were in, and malaria pills I thought I'd need.

In that same drawer was my The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe book, which I bought somewhere around month 4 when I just had to escape India one way or another... which had an exotic address hand-scrawled in the back: Shri Hari Yoga Ashram, Kanchianikoot Vashisht, Manali - in the Himalayas.

This was the ashram where John and I were determined to track down our yogi guru from Goa: Swami Yoganand (we just called him the living pretzel). When I asked the master yogi how we'd find this ashram in the Himalayas (where he teaches April through October when he's not in Goa), he simply said: "It is near the Petrol Pump." Hmm.

One of the best finds from memory lane was a stack of about 50 post-it notes, which were meant to be a video that John and I made for the next Hyderabad fellow. So what did we think was important to share to the new Hyderabadis? A few of my favorites:

• Locks are on both sides of the door. Develop a system so you don't get locked inside.
• www.makemytrip.com
• Anything is possible; "no" doesn't exist here
• Honking means joy
• Hotel Shadab by Charminar for delicious biryani
• On your birthday, bring a cake to work. Blow out the candles before the singing starts.
• When crossing the street, look LEFT. Then right. Then left again.
• 911 = 108

Nice to know at least some of these are still useful years later! ;)