When Mad Met Madder - A Trip To Hyderabad

There is a place on earth, a land full of wonder, mystery, and danger, some say to survive it,you need to be a mad hatter,which luckily i am.
                                                                                      - Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland

Mr X doesn't believe in ghosts, he doesn't believe in magic, and he definitely doesn't believe in last minute plans drawn up by me, at my whims and fancies. On Saturday, the Christmas long weekend seemed achingly long, it seemed like a perfect waste of a good opportunity- till Saturday 7 pm, which is where I start now from.

Me - Do you want to come to Bijapur, we could catch the 9 pm bus to Solapur from Chembur. One day trip we reach Solapur in the morning, head to Bijapur and then back again. But there is a problem, the bus is at 9 pm

Sasa - I could start from my place at 7.30 pm..... book the tickets now!!!!!!!!

Sasa and I started, super excited, with an enthusiastic auto wala, reached Chembur well before 9. We were ready and set to explore Bijapur, or the far right of  'Patthar Pradesh' which Sasa kept calling the North Karnataka triangle of Bijapur-Hampi and Badami famous for the rock cut caves, the erstwhile Vijaynagar empire, the triangle was not feasible for a day trip, so we were doing Bijapur only. When I woke up in the morning, Sasa was wide-awake (She is an information repository, and lived up to her reputation -  the bus had broken down, the driver was trying to fix the bus with M-Seal, Solapur was half an hour away according to people on the left etc etc). Since I knew I wouldn't miss any information with her awake, I dozed off still some more, and the bus started a couple of hours late, at day break.

I had always thought the bus was headed to Solapur. I had envisioned a big bus stand, where we would come to a halt, and from where we would get our bus to Bijapur. So when we stopped at a nondescript bus-stop half an hour later, I didn’t get down, I expected a bigger stop to come later, twenty minutes and lots of sugarcane fields later, a mild panic attack shock and we figured Solapur had passed, and next big bus station was Hyderabad.

Mr X doesn't believe such things can happen, he will shake his head and probably voice his discontent, Mr X is normal. Normal people would feel dread, but then Sasa and me are fanciful mad hatters, forever ready to jump from one unknown cliff to another, in the reckless pursuit of the new. Once over the initial shock, we were more excited than ever, and Hyderabad seemed like a distant dream come true, a personal wonderland. We decided it was impossible to return in a day, I already had my leave approved, Sasa would take the next day off.

We entered Hyderabad from Ring Road, and into Gachibowli, enroute we had figured Gachibowli had a lot of good hotels, and really nice deals, because it was close to the IT offices, but it was really far from the city center. We booked our hotel en-route, bang opposite, to a branch of the famed Paradise hotel of Hyderabadi biryani in Himayat Nagar, next door to Paradise was Almond House, a famous shop for sweets. We were dropped off to Paradise by a very helpful rickshaw wala, he recommended buying from Government Emporiums only, and remarked Char Minar was for cheat shopping, Begum Bazar was the real deal. It would have cost us 700 bucks to visit Hyderabad places in his rickshaw, but Golconda was out of question then. Golconda we were also told, had a really nice light show 7.30 pm in the evening. We also found out about Telangana -HOHO (Hop on Hop off bus service), it starts from Lumbini park/Birla Mandir and ends by 2 pm. Lumbini park was 3 kms for us, and for the record, Hyderabad had a 250 people queue to get into Lumbini park which had a total radius of 1.5 kms, we visited the park only with the help of a nice girl who bought our tickets, not wanting to watch the Laser show another queue with 50 people, or do boating then walked shopped our way back to the hotel, in anticipation of the new day.

Below is the route map for HOHO, considering the wait time, and the enormity of some of these places, I don't think half an hour is feasible, but I guess one could opt for it, and then come back later to a place they really liked. The HOHO costs 250 per head.

We went to Birla Mandir, but HOHO seemed impossible so we took a local bus (8C) and headed to Salarjung museum (after a very long queue), which ended up being the highlight of the trip. It is the third largest museum in India, and has a treasure trove of collections, it houses swords of Aurangzeb, Tipu Sultan, various Chinese, Japanese vases, and the veiled Rebecca (pics at the end),

We then headed to Hotel Shadab, near Charminar also recommended for its food (Me for Veg Sasa for non-veg), and walked to Charminar. Charminar is an ancient market, lots of humdrum around, pavements encroached by street sellers, ladies haggling, blocking the streets, so you take turn walking on the congested pavement and the busy road, watching absorbing the culture around. I did try venturing into some shops, but I figured that when shopkeepers were dropping prices from 7K to 5K in 5 mins, there was no way I could figure the actual worth and desisted buying, Sasa and I gave up at the thought of the long queue, and climbing 4 floors, of Char Minar, with our bags, and after circling the building, we headed back. For our return tickets, the bus wala asked us to come to Gachibowli by 6, we took a bus to Mehndipatnam and then we were planning to take another bus to Gachibowli from there.  We passed Lakdi ka pool and Nampally, where we were advised to get down by a nice lady, she told us Nampally was the biggest station in Hyderabad. We continued but in fact, Mehndipatnam turned out to be a wrong choice for us, 20 mins of walking and searching later, most of the buses for Mumbai which passed from there, were fully booked or had left, we booked a ticket to Mumbai for a 9 pm bus, boarding from Afzalgunj. This place was 5 kms from Famous Ice-Cream and an outlet of Karachi sweets, and also turned out to be 5 mins from Begum Bazar. Our friendly autowala from Day 1 had suggested we go to Begum Bazar and not shop in Charminar, and this place was really very nice. There were roads and inroads of shops, and the entrance road, lined up with the biggest pots and pans I had seen. It seems Hyderabad’s do everything in large groups, including cooking, which is why we had found so many long queues in most of the places, there were big groups which had come visiting together. And even though it is Owaisi’s city, there is a very seamless integration of cultures and people. We only had half an hour, quickly wrapping up, we headed back to the bus stop and back to Mumbai.

Sasa sent me a picture of Chowmahalla and Golconda fort the next day in office in Mumbai, we are longing to go back to the food and memories, Hyderabad we come back to you - another day

Mahishashurmadrini  - Indian miniature at Salarjung

Brahma with four Devotees

Court music

Ram Darbar- Deccani

Ram-Hanuman Pahadi

Shah-Jahan hunting

Yogi with disciples

Contemporary Indian painting Benarsees by Benoda Behari Mukherjee Salarjung) Sasa the Banarsee agrees that it depicts the mood of the city and people 

 Pistol revolver collection at Salarjung - These were so cute, it seemed impossible they could fire

Walking Stick collection, ebony, fish bone, decorative, carved, some had a secret sword inside for self protection, some were novel, with the press of a lever, the dog's mouth could open and close

Char Minar and a pretty dashing icon denoting ladies seat in the local bus- very apt for the ladies solo trip

The pots and pans of Begum Bazar 

The veiled Rebecca. 

The museum also houses an excellent clock collection. In the center courtyard, there is a clock, where a dwarf comes in from a white door to strike a gong every hour, difficult to capture with the clock glass.