Tamil Pongal during our last day in India

Tamil Pongal is one of many festivals Tamils celebrate every year. It indicates the end of the harvest season that begins on the first day of Tamil month of Thai which starts on the 14th of January and lasts for four days. The Indian celebrate Pongal to show their gratefulness to Mother Nature for blessing them with normal rainfall.
We were lucky to see this festival on our last day in India, we saw cattle that are colorfully decorated with flowers and painting on their foreheads, even their horns are painted. Families await this pongal to bring their children to watch the cattle show and enjoy the food. Also, there were a lot of small shops that we bought many gifts to bring back home. It was a great beautiful day, the temperature was in the seventies with a beautiful sunshine that we were enjoying before we go back to subzero weather that is waiting for us back home.

Hyderabad, India

Hyderabad was the most beautiful city that we visited in India. It is the fifth largest metropolitan city in India, followed by Calcutta, Chennai Delhi, and Mumbai. Hyderabad is located in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. It is a popular trading center for pearls and diamonds sometimes is actually referred to as the Pearl City. It is a very clean city compare to Chennai or Bangalore. We stayed there for four days and visited many places such as Charminar which was built in year 1959; it is a beautiful building with four towers called minarets and a dome right in the middle. The structure is made of granite, lime and marble. The other place that we visited was Golconda Fort which is one of the most wonderful monuments that was built in eleventh century. One of the most important features of this fort is that the sounds of hands clapped at the entry gate which can be heard quite clearly at the top of the hill. So, we all walked the 360 steps that took us to the highest point to see the beautiful scenery and to take the most gorgeous pictures in Hyderabad; after that we attended the Sound and Light Show that was boring in my opinion. After the show we went with Dr. Rao to a beautiful club to meet his friends and have something to eat. We stayed there for couple of hours and went back to the University where we were staying.