Summary:
Days:......................Friday to Sunday (6-8th November 2009)
Temperature:........ T-shirt walla
Rainfall:..................Casual. In good humour.
Sex:.......................None
Export:...................None. There was nothing that they wanted from me.
Import:...................None. There was nothing that I could afford from them. (Pearls and jewelery per se)
Chapter 1.
The Airport
Hyderabad boasts of a super-coolly made airport. The only glitch is that most super-cool things are now made many miles away from the city. I made my way to the tourist information center which sadly was not marked anywhere near the exit gates. I could deal with that no problem, but when it was brought to my attention that the airport didn't have a dedicated tourist information center, something died inside me. I missed the fancy " i ". I then made my way to the taxi walla and Mr Meru took me to my hotel in about 45 minutes, driving across an eleven point five kilometer long flyover.
Chapter two:
The Conference
I entered my hotel, checked in and sat at the multi-cuisine buffet breakfast. The hotel reception staff compensated for an absent " i " at the airport by arranging a pocket map of the city for me. At the conference venue I socialised with the lot and had lunch, which was rather gratifying.
Chapter Three
The outing
As the clock struck late afternoon, I moved back to my hotel room, changed into my walking gear and left for Hussain Sagar Lake. A colleague, probably unaware of my brand of masochistic tourism pleaded to join me and walked along. We walked far and wide aided by the local map and ever helpful Hyderabadi locals, and within minutes reached the artificial lake named Hussain Sagar, which was dug somewhere in the 16th century AD as a water reservoir.
Ankur by then was dead tired and conveyed this to me by ways of interesting abuses. Ultimately when I felt the abuse could readily turn into acts of needless violence, I caved in to his wishes and we entered Lumbini Park. The guards wished to have the camera checked and I made them check it in the most functional way possible.
Once inside the park I could see a cricket practice net, the wickets at one end and a machine that automatically throws tennis balls at the court when a single person wishes to practice and play at the other. The objective was to hit a half century in 18 balls which when achieved shall grant you another 18 balls to convert your score to a century. I just had to do it. I made 34.
Thence on Ankur realised that I am a mean bastard who won't let him rest even in a park, and pulled me in his characteristically cool way to a place where death took a toll at my enthusiasm in one of the more graphic ways that one gets to see only in Tarantino movies.
Obviously he was only looking for some rest and did not buy anything, but the experience enhanced my knowledge on the subject of pearls. It was Ankurs mighty plan to then drag me to another place called snowworld or snow land or something. It was a sort of place I personally would never ever have gone during my travels, but I have absolutely no reason to complain because once we went in, it was rather good fun inside. I owe all this to Ankur of course.
Once out from the Hyderabad woods, had to rush to the hotel to change and attend the evening dinner in the lawns of Apollo hospital. Reached the hotel, draped myself in artificial fragrance and left for the dinner session.
Book Two. The next day
Chapter Four:
Liaison
The day started with a brilliant one hour session at the breakfast table. The course started mildly with fresh fruits, reached a crescendo with ham and cheese, accelerated upwards through the south indian vada samber and reached a steaming orgasm with a bowl of kellog's chocos with wallnuts, raisins, dried figs and whole milk. The conference immediately after was sort of a dampener, and the high part at the venue was me meeting Dr Achamma Balraj, Professor Audio-vestibular Medicine CMC Vellore, the only person who had been to London for the Masters before myself.
Chapter Five:
The Max Day
As soon as lunch was served I left the venue, one because I wasn't carrying the coupon for lunch and two because I had anyway planned to have the anticipatory delicious biryani served at the old town. The auto rickshaw I hired almost immediately ran out of fuel and stopped at a refueling station. I was particularly enthused watching a petrol operated rickshaw at a time when in Delhi all of them now use CNG. So I took a picture.
My man left me at the Charminar. There are two kinds of popular places. One, which owe their popularity to their very build, structure and magnitude, and two, which owe theirs only to the story behind them. Charminar clearly fell in the latter. Though the structure itself was not badly done, it didn't however elicit the same respect that I would like to give to something of a national stature. The story that it was built to redeem and protect the city from some kind of a plague was reasonably interesting. Below you see a) an image of the Minar from the outside, b) the image of outside from the Minar, and c) an image of inside the Minar from inside the Minar in order of reverse.
Next on my agenda was the Mecca Masjid. Personally I prefer the Jama Masjid in New Delhi for the reason that security guards don't stop people to enter with bags, phones and cameras, plus that one can climb up one of the minars and bask in the panorama of Delhi's low rise buildings in the area. The interesting part seen here is the cleaning women in the Municipal jackets with the Masjid in the backdrop.
By this time the morning breakfast was metabolised to its last molecule of glucose and I was in hunt for food. Already the local shopkeepers had told me that Charminar was not a grand place where one could find kebabs and my only hope lied in the well recommended Hotel Shahran.(Someone even suggested hotel Shabaab, but my instincts didn't let me fall for the trap. ) I quenched my appetite with liberal helpings of the kebabs and moved to the Salar Jung museum which was within walking distance from the minar. On my way I came across shops selling arms and ammunitions the price of which I happily haggled with but my conscience (and a weak feeling at the knees that one gets when holding a live firearm) prevented me from venturing forth.
As I walked towards the museum, I came across an interesting godown for raw bananas. Here it shows.
The Salarjung Museum was a bit of a let down really. Probably the British Museum (I used to live 200 mts away on the same road), and other London museums have set the bar a bit too high. So I made my way out of the display in the next thirty minutes and boarded a rickshaw for the Golkonda Fort, which remains my high point of the day.
The fort was built over seven generations and encompasses an area of seven kilometer square, the inner construction of which is about three square kilometers. Please note that for me as a tourist numbers are meaningless and I mention them only for the sake of completion. The point equally passes along with the fact the the fort was really amazingly big.
I hired a guide, named Ghaffur, who showed me around the place and told facts in detail. I should mention here that there is something about the old Indian Palaces, Castles and Forts that makes me fill up with a very potent energy and enthusiasm. And a tour without a well qualified tour guide is as rotten as something very rotten.
Here's a short commentary video by Ghaffur where he tells about the brief history of the fort,and Hyderabad itself. Might fill you up with the feel of being there too. Watch it. And listen to the brilliance of the breeze.
Once through with the guided tour, I stayed back to watch a laser show where different coloured lights light up the fort and surround sound in Mr Amitabh Bachchan's voice fills up the space detailing the history of the fort. It was near perfect. Apart from the song routine in between but that could easily be ignored amidst the beauty of the fort and lovely-ness of the weather (it was partly drizzling on and off).
As soon as I was through with the show I rushed back to my hotel where I changed in little under four minutes and tagged along one of the delegation party to the conference banquet. In the halla-balloo it was inevitable that I forget something at the hotel, and the camera chose to volunteer by deciding to place itself over the bathroom slab and lying desolate and alone all along the late evening. It was then when my phone camera came to the rescue.
After leaving the banquet I reached the hotel by about 11 PM. One thing I had by this time realised, that in Hyderabad people weren't really into food as much as when compared to the northerners. We guys need food, and lots of it. Biryani is all right once in a while but there should be scope for other things too. So as is the case, I was fairly peckish when I reached the hotel. At this hour the weather was fine and roads empty so I decided to stroll. About a kilometer of walking and no sign of a chaalu food shop forced me to take an auto rickshaw to the nearest place where I could gather a packet of crisps. After much ado we finally reached a chemist from whom I took a pack of biscuits and a couple of crisps. Here is when the autowallah dropped me back at the hotel.
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Now powered with positive energy, a packet of biscuits and two packets of chips, I planned to make the most of my holiday by watching a movie on my laptop ( which rested on the English Style Potty) while me myself laid back in a hot bath munching on my packet of crisps. Tropic Thunder.
Finally tucked myself in the razaai and had a peaceful sound sleep.
Book Three: Day of Retreat
Chapter Six:
Quiz
Woke up at a convenient time and dressed myself up for the magnanimous breakfast. I had by now developed an immensely strong sense of respect towards the first meal of the day. Once through, I went to the conference venue and waited for the last event of the day, the CIGI quiz in which I was a participant.
After a long wait did start the quiz. The teams were set by the organisers and cutting a long story short, it would suffice to say that yours truly won the first prize. Here is the pic with the certificate. Shall post the ones where the official cameraman clicked as and when they upload them on the CIGI Site.
I carried my First Prize ( A Phillips 2 gb portable music and video player) to my room back in the hotel, checked out, deposited my baggage in the cloak room and left for Paradise Hotel, the most reputed Biryani provider in Hyderabad. Was pleasantly surprised to find a mega building that had a take away counter at the ground floor, an economy restaurant at the first and a fine dine at the second. I packed two kilograms of biryani for my kinsfolk and sat for a hefty meal of biryani for the hour.
This task finished, I rushed back to the hotel, had a cold coffee with colleagues from the conference and left back for New Delhi.
This marks an end of my travelogue to Hyderabad.
Fare Well !!
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