Day 175: Country #20

Having seen the older city to the south and the modern tech campuses to the West, I wanted to go north and east, but I didn’t feel that I had enough time to go to Secunderabad, so I decided to only go east.

I wanted to see one of the city’s larger campuses, Osmania University to better understand the education system that trains India’s white collar workforce. From the bus I got off at Chey Number so that I could walk around the adjacent neighborhood. I followed a road which led directly onto campus.

The campus was quite large, but much of it was filled with open space and a smattering of large buildings. After some distance I found the college of technology. Something about the “(autonomous)” declaration on the entrance gave me the sense that each college within the university operates independently and protects its own territory.

In addition, I was surprised to see the poorly designed entrance. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see much more than that as I was not able to enter. I suppose I was expecting to see glass structures much like those at Mindspace Park’s technology campus, but there were none. This challenged my belief that university campuses are a window into the future of a country. I had seen the past on day one when I went to the old city, the present on day two when I went to HiTech city, but Osmania University did not feel like the future.

As I made my way off campus, I tried to take a different route back to the gate where I entered, but it was more of the same. However, I was amused by a sign directing people to an extremely long acronym. I was curious what PGRRCDE stood for and tried to ask someone, but she turned out to be a new student and I didn’t have enough time to find it on my own.

Once I left campus, it was relatively simple to catch a return bus, but there was a fair bit of traffic. I spent the second half of the day walking through the neighborhood looking for a haircut, packing, resting, planning out the next legs of my trip and making a few phone calls.

Tip:

I like to logically divide a city into parts like East and West of a central reference point then set aside relatively equal amounts of time for each section of interest. This method lets me allocate time more equally and see more areas instead of fixating too much time in a specific location. Even though a section might have more sights than another, if you stay there, you’ll miss out on the bigger picture.

Published by BE

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