August 11th: Hyderabad to Bangalore

We packed up the van with all of our suitcases, etc, having to literally climb over piles of them to get into our seats. It was our last day in Hyderabad. We drove a couple hours out of Hyderabad, searching for IIT Hyderabad, a famous university out in a rural area. Honestly, I don't know how anyone navigates anywhere as I have yet to see any signs indicating street names or addresses. Consequently, we got very very lost. We turned around multiple times, asking cow herders on the side of the road if they had heard of IIT. At least half of their directions sent us on a wild goose chase. We ended up actually getting directed to a different university and having to back track again.

I'm not sure how but in the end we made it to IIT, much later than intended. We tried to stuff into a small conference room, pulling in chairs from other rooms and constantly reshuffling as people came in. We traded off, giving presentations from about 11-2, at which point we broke for lunch. Our driver got lost once on the way to lunch. We ate with students and faculty, speaking about their research and our own projects. We then went back and they presented a bit more, but we had to stop around 3:30 or so because we had to drive to the airport.

We flew from Hyderabad to Bangalore that evening, not arriving to our hotel (the Ginger Hotel) until 10 or 10:30. We got in our rooms and went right to bed.