It's been almost 2 weeks since I got back from India - I think I'm just about recovered. I was in Hyderabad from July 20-25 for a workshop focused on analysis of high-throughput ("next generation") DNA sequence data. The workshop was hosted by ICRISAT, an agricultural research facility which is part of a larger international group (CGIAR) focused on crop improvement for developing countries. The workshop was sort of small, but this enables much more intimate communication, since you're talking to the same 30 people for 3 days straight.
Higher-resolution versions of all these pictures are available at http://byrnedhead.net/photos/India/ . I unfortunately broke my camera partway through the trip, so I have relatively few photos, but I do have some pretty good pictures of the wildlife on the ICRISAT grounds.
This is a mast tree - I was struck by its rather unconventional architecture.
I'm not sure what kind of egrets these are - they were following a guy on a riding lawnmower, presumably trying to grab insects kicked up by the lawnmower.
These are painted storks - ICRISAT has an artificial lake that apparently is host to a lot of migrating birds in November and December.
This is a statue of Ganesh on the ICRISAT grounds - allegedly 1000 years old.
On Tuesday the 21st we visited the tombs of the Qutb Shahi dynasty. The fifth shah, Mohammed, built the city of Hyderabad (and the Charminar) in 1591 after the old city/fort Golconda grew too populous to be contained within the city walls. His tomb is the one pictured above.
The tomb complex is spread a few dozen acres, with a different structure for each person.
The interior of one of the tombs.
This is me turning red after eating a particularly strong chile pepper. Several of the Indians told me that the local cuisine was hotter than in other parts of India, but after several days I was not impressed. On Thursday we were at a restaurant in town which had an inoccuous-looking bowl of chiles at the buffet, so I took a few and found that they were sufficiently spicy.
