IDT Part Three

After disembarking from our landing craft on the beach at Gopalpur-by-the-Sea, we boarded buses for our next stop at the Indian Army Air Defence College at Berhampur. This is where the Indian Army trains all of its air defense weapon crews. The highlight of the tour was a demonstration on the beach of the various air defense weapons. As an American, I'm used to mission planning against these weapons, so kind of cool to see them in action.

An OSA-AK vehicle

Video of a ZSU-23 firing

Video of an Igla man-portable air defense system

Video of two Strela air defense vehicles

After seeing the air defense firepower demo, we took the buses to the nearest train station where we met back up with our chartered train. The next day was spent getting settled back on the train. While riding, I was quickly taken under the wing of many Indian officers who wanted to teach me how to play their favorite gambling card game called Flash. I was a bit leery of being a newcomer playing cards for money, but the rules were fairly easy. In return, I taught them how to play Texas Hold'em. They all thought this was pretty cool since this was the game James Bond was playing in Casino Royale.

A day later we turned up at our next stop, Secunderabad. Secunderabad is connected to the large city of Hyderabad. We were scheduled for an overnight stop in the city, so we took the opportunity to book into a proper hotel for the night. After a rather lackluster tour of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, a few of us jumped into tuk-tuks and headed for the nearest Taj Hotel, always a reliable choice in India for upscale lodging. Even better, there was a shopping center across the street from the hotel which had a proper bar. We showed at Happy Hour and proceded to drain eight pitchers of Kingfisher beer before heading out for some food. Hyderabad is famous for a local biryani dish...basically spicy rice and chicken. We found a restaurant in the area serving biryani and kebabs. Since we'd all had a few too many beers, we ordered way too much food and ate it all way too fast. The food was excellent, but we were all feeling the effects of spicy food eaten at midnight that next morning.

Happy Hour: Gangs, Jose (Chile), Tim (UK), Chris (Singapore), me and Jeff

Jose gets more beers.

Hyderabad biryani at midnight.

After the brief respite of a proper bed, toilet, and shower for the night, it was back to the train the next morning and on our way to the next stop, Ahmednagar, where I would get up close and personal with some Indian salmonella...