Here in this land, food and temperature are definitely ways to wake up to this place: the food is hot by Canadian standards, and very tasty by any (and too oily). At this point though I'm learning that getting used to the food is not a matter of sweating less or hurting gently. No, locals sweat and cry too. The difference is the response to the pain: you learn to like it. To appreciate its shades; as well as start to see in between the lashes of chillies and curries the velvets of dahls, the juiciness of meats, the crispiness or tenderness of breads, the sweetness and pungency of sambars, the harmonies and counterpoints of the many spices and greens.

Hyderabad is in between north and south, is also attracting people from all over india to cyberabad and its economic trickle down, and so gives one tastes from all over india. But biriani is the local specialty.

The air temperature is in the 30s in this period, and going up. It will reach well into the 40s in May, then hopefully the Monsoon will climb from the south, over the mountains and into the Deccan plateau, and wash down everything.
It's a very dry place, extremes can be under 20% humidity; heat is much more bearable... drinking one's necessary litres of liquid is easy and barely enough. As always I find water hard to swallow and look for coffee, tea and juices. I drink coffee all day, and consider myself lucky I can down this juice I love and can still fall asleep at the drop of anyone's hat.
The other side of dryness is dust. Everything feels covered in dust from the red earth of the place, and so everything seems old and half abandoned. And gave me a kind of allergy/cold/cough that luckly is starting to go away.
Everything is dusty except the people: so many young, shiny and colourful. It's really quite wonderful: shirts and sarees dance everywhere; people have jet black hair often shiny perhaps with oils: after all the word shampoo is approximative hindu for hair care, a concept the brits found terribly effeminate when they arrived, since for most europeans washing and body care were rather curious and certainly superfluous activities compared to the various purification rituals muslims and hindus practiced for ages.
Everyone smiles easily, with shiny white teeth and eyes, with that typical head wave, left to right whether they say yes or no, and there is in general a certain dynamic gentleness: despite the heat and poverty, even when people simply sit and stare around, it does not feel slow: perhaps it is a kind of attention that one has, perhaps it's just a misleading look, perhaps it's the dignified pose people strike so easily, perhaps they simply sleep enough: it's not uncommon to see sleepers at any time of the day, by road sides, balanced on bikes against walls, under trees, under highway bridges, in between cars, and maybe for others in places more discrete, or the many shantytown makeshift tents. Life between 12 and 4 slows down a lot. Like in Bucharest dogs saunter or sleep all over the place, except here they are less aggressive.