We finally made it to Hyderabad (or Cyberadad as some call it), one of the large IT centres of India. Its a lovely city, and a lot more modern than most. For the first time on the trip we stayed in a fairly nice hotel where we got room service and relaxed heaps. There is a large muslim population there too, so many muslim men with caps and women with the full length black head to toe, covering face, walking around. Much of the architecture also has a Muslim feel to it. The large mosque in town is pretty huge, and the Charminar is kind of like a structure built over the road with a mosque up on the first level. Its pretty impressive. The markets and streets are bustling and lively. We visited the museum which was OK, pretty standard. We visited the main city hindu temple which was made out of solid marble and was just beautiful. You get 360 views over the city too which is pretty white-washed from up there. They've built a huge man-made lake and in the middle on an island is one of the largest standing buddha statues in the world. We thought it also time to see some wildlife so we went to the Nehru zoological park (2nd largest in India), and saw a whole score of wildlife from monkeys, to wolves, lions, leopards, and yes, finally tigers! I was expecting the zoo to be quite depressing, but it was actually very well maintained, and set on stunning grounds, all leafy and quiet and unpolluted, so was a pleasant surprise and was nice spending a day away from the pollution and traffic for a change. To see the tigers you had to go on a 'safari' - not a real one but theres a large section of the zoo closed off to visitors, which is like natural habitat where they can wander reasonable free. You can pay to go in by vehicle and see the tigers, so we chose to do that incase the rest of the trip didnt bring any tiger spottings. We spotted a tiger on top of a rock, stretching and parading itself for us like it knew we were coming, so we were stoked about that. All in all, it was a really nice surprise as we weren't planning on going to HB, so happy. We booked our bus to Chennai and unfortunately for us it was an overnight bus, but only seated, so we attempted to sleep sitting up but my tail bone was stinging, there were mossies and a little boy sleeping at my feet. In themorning we went over some bumps in the road (one large one in particular), and because we were in the back seat, 2 guys and paul and I got thrown around (literally thrown), and Paul hit his head and I whacked my nose which started bleeding. I thought I'd knocked some teeth out at first but, luckily not! The other INdian men complained to the driver, saying somehting about not letting women sit in the back seat (nevermind pauls head), which was thoughtful.