Day 87, Hyderabad [Wednesday 27th February 2008]
Previous day: Day 86, Tiruvannamalai [Tuesday 26th February 2008]
Next day: Day 88, Hyderabad [Thursday 28th February 2008]
We wake up around 7.30am, and it seems like the entire train carriage has slept in — usually there's hustle and bustle from 6am onwards, but today all is quiet, the curtains between beds still pulled shut. We have some coffee from the man walking through the train.
Most of the passengers disembark at Secunderabad, but we trundle on slowly for another half hour, going around the lake to Hyderabad itself. The hotels are very busy, and we walk between 3 or 4 without any luck before we helpfully get pointed in the direction of Suhail. It's large, basic but quite clean, and has a friendly, helpful receptionist. Hyderabad feels big already.
We get a rickshaw to Golconda Fort, site of the region's capital before it shifted to Hyderabad proper. We chug along in Hyderabad's congested traffic. At one point I count eight lanes of it.
The fort is an impressive structure, atop a huge hill with a commanding position and view over miles and miles of country. Apparently impregnable, it held out against the attacking forces of Aurangzeb's army from Delhi for 8 months, eventually being defeated only through internal treachery. It's well-kept, tidy and blazingly hot. The people who work here are also surprisingly, refreshingly friendly.
We go a few kilometres down the road to the Qutub Shahi Tombs, the burial mausoleums of seven generations of kings of this region. These structures are amazing — huge domes rising out of a woodland setting, seated on high, arched bases. Each one contains the coffin-shaped tomb of the king, in an immense, cool, otherwise empty room. It feels spiritually calming.
Each of these tombs is different, each one precisely proportioned. The whole area exudes a calm and quiet that is a world away from the big city craziness we drove through to get here.
We get a rickshaw to the Charminar, in the oldest part of Hyderabad. Its four minarets (the meaning of its name) soar over the old town. We pay Rs. 100 and go inside, climbing up one of the towers, passing two hysterically giggling and somewhat out of breath Indian women on the way up. It's a lovely building, with arches in the walls thourhg which you can look down to the courtyard and fountain below. Over precariously low walls you can look out over the crowded bazaars and rickshaw filled streets.
We browse thorugh the bazaars next. Shop after shop of silks and cottons and other textiles, glittering saris arrayed in every window, and inside several men sitting on padded cushions on the floor waiting to measure you up. We also visit the Mecca Masjid, a large mosque that's almost 400 years old. Unfortunately we can't go inside, and the huge nets keeping birds out of the building make it look rather ugly.
With only 2 days here we have to cram the sights in, so we get another rickshaw to the manmade lake, the Hussain Sagar, in the middle of which, on an island, stands India's largest monolithic statue of Buddha. After a strict security process, including being frisked, we get a ferry out to the island. It's a pleasing piece of art, its tunic rippling like sand on a seabed. It was carved by 40 artisans. As the sun goes down some speakers dotted around the island playing some surprisingly apt chanting music.
We get the boat back to shore and look around the bazaars and teeming market stalls some more. Then we go for dinner at Shadab on High Court Road, an old-school looking restaurant where we order zuban nihari — goat's tongue curry, sheermal — A foccaccia-like bread, seekh kebab, special chicken biryani and sweet stewed apricots. The food is delicious, the biryani much more delicate than those we have had previously. The service is friendly, and the setting is plush and comfortable, but obviously ageing.
We manage to stagger, stuffed, to a rickshaw, and from there onto Karachi bakery where we run into an English bloke of Indian descent who's on holiday. The first thing he does is recommend a place where we can get a good naan!
After that, buying water at a shop, we realise the bloke behind the counter is American, again of Indian descent. I point this out to him, and he explains that he's come here to get married, and the owner is his soon to be father-in-law, who he introduces us to. We walk home, smiling at the friendliness of this city.
Next day: Day 88, Hyderabad [Thursday 28th February 2008]
Previous day: Day 86, Tiruvannamalai [Tuesday 26th February 2008]