Hyderabad revisted!!

I will call this weekend as Hyderabad revisted. Had around 5 friends here for the weekend. So while showing them around in hyderabad ended up visting whole of the old hyderabad - doing things which I have not done in the last five years.

Well to start with went over to salarjung museum again,but as usual I am not a great fan of visiting museums and lost interest very quickly.....ofcourse there are couple of things I always liked the nizam jewellery show (which was not there this time) and the arms museum . After I went thru the arms part, I was virtually roaming around. Salarjung museum is pretty close to charminar and that was the next place that we headed onto.

Charminar is very photogenic but not so when you see it infront of your eyes.But we did go to the top of charminar and spent some time on top.Its nice on top and raw mango slices with chillie powder and salt made up our stay at charminar.With the temperature soaring and touching 40 C, it was mad to roam around, but we continued doing so and headed to mecca masjid.

Mecca Masjid ,is the second largest masjid in India.This was my first visit inside a masjid and one of my friend being muslim explained us the details of what they do and it was kind of interesting to know those details. Well besides it was my first trip inside any other place of worship apart from a temple. Thats kind of ironic considering the fact I studied for 10years in a christian school. How can a trip of hyderabad get over for my friends without hyderabad biryani.

And so we headed next to Shahdab....hotel famous for biryani and had a sumptuos lunch. By the time lunch was over,it was four in the evening...the heat had taken a toll and with a full stomach...my eyelids resisted any efforts to keep them open.With great difficulty we planned our next place and headed towards falaknuma palace which was the other tourist place around the area.We reached there after a 20 min ride in a auto - all 5 of us packed into one .And to utter disgust reached there to realize that it has been taken over by Taj and is a private property now and is closed. This is something ridiculous on the part of AP government as they are still putting it as a tourist destination.Its surprising and I am sure that we were not the only guys to be fooled because of this mistake by the tourism department.

We headed back straight to Golconda fort - a 45 min ride in a auto - six of us packed inside.Something I felt was a stupid thing to do to save few bucks.Well we did it though.We reached golconda and the lawns were too tempting and we headed straight for that and I had a short nap in open air. Its not bad actually.Golconda fort is huge and we climbed the 360 odd steps to reach the top.But the view on top is worth the effort .Besides it was sunset time and being a lover of nature...the views were simply lovely.But the icing on the cake was the sound and light show which is just awesome. With some wonderful light effects illuminating different sections of the fort and the heavy voice of Big B giving the details , it is worth the effort.Once done with the brilliant show, we headed for home and their trip ended with dinner at chutneys.

Well as usual , like everybody who has come to hyderabad - they liked the city for its cleanliness, wonderful roads and lots and lots of gardens and greenery compared to mumbai,bangalore or chennai.But they did give a name to the city -Tip-Top . Tip because everybody they interacted with asked them for tips...specifically the autowallahs who took them around the city and top because the city is very well maintained.