Hyderabad Hues

Nothing can beat the joy of a well deserved vacation. This time is was a 5 day-long trip to Hyderabad with my parents nearly 7 years since the last trip. Considering the last minute decision and reservations, we were lucky enough to have a smooth sail.

## The weather was a lovely breezy after the rains and the city was festive and crowded for the ongoing Diwali and upcoming Eid celebrations.

## The Nehru Zoo has a sprawling campus with 'n' no of species of apes, big-cats, aves, amphibians, arboreals and the like. Though this is of a limited interest to grown-ups, the walk provides a wonderful exercise.

## The Golconda Fort has a superb architecture and is spread over a massive land and hill alike. Built by 3 generations of Irani kings it is an imposing structure elaborate with courts, palaces, barracks, soldier and slave rooms, dressing rooms for the king and his 360 wives.(Unholy Polygamy!)
The acoustics of this fort are amazing and there are various types of trips and traps to prevent enemy attack to the hilt. There was this 15 * 15 slave room whose ceiling had special diamond shaped cuts (those we responsible for the reflection of sound waves). Two people standing in diagonally opposite corners facing the walls can easily carry out secret communication by whispering into their respective wall corners. This was the best part of it all.

## The Birla temple done in marble hosts Lord Vishnu and looks over the placid Hussain Sagar. It offers a a bird's-eye-view of the city.
Hussain Sagar has the famous Buddha statue standing tall at its centre and ferrys at the Lumbini Park take you to the statue.

## The much talked of Ramoji city is also a nice place to visit. The owner, Ramoji whos a major enterprenuer in AP owns the 10/12 e-tv channels and coupla newspapers and is the proud possesor of this 2000 acre of land. The Ramoji Film city has 90 gardens which are rented for abt Rs. 1 lakh (daytime) and Rs. 7 lakh (nighttime) each for film shootings. There are mock airports, railway stations, churches, slum areas and other scenes in bits-and-pieces that would be needed to shoot a film. The main concept here is the facade concept. 4 elevations of the same building depict different scenes. There are various live shows like the Texas stunt show that act like fillers. Visionaries like this man Ramoji will continue to mint money for generations to come.

## The Salarjung museum is replete with a rich collection of art forms that belong to distant centuries displayed in 38 of its exhibition rooms. It demands a lot of patience but is worth a visit. Right from Indian stone sculptures, south-Indian woodwork, painted yarns, Indian gemstones, silverwork, european paintings(the most beautiful of all), glass vases, manuscripts, Chinese, Japanese clay/pottery, Egyptian collection, marble statues, kashmiri artifacts,chandeliers,wall-clocks, it takes you to a different era when people must have had ample time to devote to art and craft. One can't help feeling a slight pang of envy for the laid back life the people must have led !

The other things of interest include the Charminar, the laser and music show @ the Lumbini Park, the biryani and semi-precious pearl jewellery.

One last point to be-[a ]ware of is the awful driving habits of the people there. "Unbridled" is the only word that comes to my mind for it. Wrong sides, red-lights are almost no-bars. The rickshawalla who ferried us was an excellent example of aggressive driving and confessed later that his chief customers were people who missed their trains at the Hyderabad station and his chief job to take them at top speed to Secunderabad before the train reached reached so they could catch up.
I was having a tough time deciding which traffic was better Pune/Hyderabad, but the conclusion is that both are worse in their own unique ways.

Nevertheless had a great vacation at this city which portrays India's "secularism" to the fullest.