A TOUR OF HYDERABAD

My parents had come to hyderabad to spend the weekend with me . The arrived on saturday by flight. The next day we had planned for a city tour and as per the schedule we started on 8:30. The first place we visited was Birla Mandir where I could not go becoz i had to be with my dad who couldnt climb steep slopes. From what my mother said the view from the top must be fantastic. Then it was timne we switched buses. This time our bus was like right out of a walt disney set :) modeled like a caterpillar, but not as slow as it. So into the catepillar we went. Our next destination was charminar, but which was only a drive through it . I managed to take some pictures of it. Though it was magnificient the surrounding areas are filthy making the place unfit for tourists to make a stop.


The next place was a chow_something palace which belonged to the nizams of hyderabad . The excellence of mughal architecture is unmatched, There are totally 4 mahals within the premises of the palace each of them serving a distinct purpose right from housing the durbar to the store of vintage cars, the paintings, the artifacts like bowls, chandeliers,paintings , armour, silver plates,daggers, pistols, scabbards and swords were absolutely briliant :)

Our next dest was salar jung museum . For an average individual it may seem boring, But for an art admirer that place is a heaven. I would like to mention a carving in marble called the veiled lady (of course i forgot the name) i thought there was a veil draped over her face but on close inspection i found that it was purely marble and nothing else.It seemed as viewing the face through a translucent cloth but it was entirely carved in marble. I was stunned.

The next thing of that place was a mechanical engineering marvel .There was a clock which had gerat carvings . At the top of the dial there was a blacksmith with a hammer stricking an anvil. This takes place for all seconds . Then came the twist 2 minutes before the hour completed a small door opened an a bell man came out. And exactly when the hour hand touched the next hour the man rang a small bell ,the number of strokes equal to the time .The entire event was being telecasted in a big hall.

Sudha car museum , a guiness record holder for manufacturing different designs of cars. All the cars are hand made and are working models. There were cars like a f car, train , computer , pen , burger and almost all the possible designs and then i realized the caterpillar bus was also designed here .:)

Then we visited golconda fort , a long way to climb up but an excellent for spoiled by the local public . Suddenly i realized that the dome in golconda fort is known for reverbration, a phenomenon of multiple reflection of sound. I clapped my hands and eagerly waited for the response. Suddenly I heard a clap close to my ear, I wondered." wow the acoustics is still good" . Then much to my frustration it was the clap from another guy who was trying to test the same. He too did not obtain any result beoz many others were clapping . Finally i decided to drop my idea of testing :)

The last part of the journey was through Hussain Sagar lake, true to its name is not a lake but huge as an ocean . There is a statue of buddha floating there. This float was erected by L&T.

Thus ended my eventful sojourn with much knowledge of the places of interest in Hyderabad not to mention the leg pain i got because of scaling the entire golconda fort in 15 min.

For art & architecture freaks these places are a must to visit and for food freaks still Hyderabad is a place to visit becoz of it's biryani not to mention the malls and imax. Thank god we did not go for an iv else we would have ended up touring the bars and pubs of Hyderabad (no offence again)