Golconda Fort
The first full day in Hyderabad! Today we started out like any normal day in a hotel – complimentary breakfast! Had some small sammiches, idli with chutney, pongol, toast, and masala chai. The literal translation for Chai is “tea”, and masala is a mixture of spices. When people order a Chai Tea from a coffee shop (which is basically like ordering “queso cheese” at a Mexican restaurant) this is essentially what is being ordered, except this is black tea brewed with milk and water with spices added. MUCH better than any version I’ve gotten at a coffee shop or made with the concentrate (no big surprise there).
After finishing breakfast, Puji and her mom stayed behind in the hotel while her dad to my dad and I to Golcolda Fort. This was also our first introduction to Hyderabad traffic in daylight. It is hard to do it justice with words, but bumper-to-bumper in the literal sense is pretty close. Cars (called 4-wheelers) are considered a luxury and motorcycles and scooters (2-wheelers) are the norm. the 2-wheelers provide easy transportation, plus it makes it easy for the riders to zip in and around the cars while in traffic, which they did constantly. It made for a worn out spot where we wished the brake pedal was in the passenger seat when myself or my dad sat there. Puji’s dad definitely got a kick out of my dad and my squeamishness while trying to get accustomed to the ways of the road.
After about a 30-minute drive, we arrived at Golconda. The entire fort is a little over a square mile spread across an entire hilltop, rising 130 meters from the base to the top. Golconda was initially a mud fort beginning construction in the mid 1100’s, then fortified while under Sultan rule between the 14th and 17th centuries, and also played hosts to the British royalty during their occupation. We had a tour guide with us for the history lesson and to take group pictures which helped soak in some of the history and fill up the memory card.
Along with the sheer size of the entire fort complex, there is some impressive masonry done with the acoustics of some of the chambers. As we entered into the first dome chamber, we looked up to find the ceiling having several large dimples in the ceiling. When someone claps their hands standing in the center of this chamber, the sound reverberates and can actually be heard at the ‘Bala Hisar’ pavilion at the top of the fort – almost a kilometer away. Pretty cool early burglar alarm.
Going to the Mall
After looking all around the lower part of the fort (there were a lot of stairs to climb to the top, and we’ll use the excuse of not having enough time for not making the climb to the top) we went to one of malls for some wedding clothes shopping. First stop was the food court where we got some Punjabi food (Punjab is a northern region of India, on the southern border of the Himalayas). As with most of the food we’ve had so far: had lots of flavor and I guess our hosts are taking it easy on us because nothing was TOO spicy for us. I got two wedding kurtas (think these but with a pale American in it) and my dad also got one. Fit really well, but I’ll wait to show those pictures until the actual wedding.
Chaitu and Shanti’s Wedding Reception
One of the nice things about this trip is that we have some friends who also got married while we are over here. Hindu weddings have the date and times chosen according to an auspicious date found by looking at the birthdate and location of both the bride and groom, so it is very possible that a wedding can occur at an odd time compared to what you typically in western weddings. Chaitu and Shanti’s wedding ceremony had the start time of 1:30am, but because it was so late, they had the reception beforehand, so we went early to see them before Puji’s mom took my dad and I back to the hotel because we are wussies and were suffering from jetlag. Luckily, Puji’s mom knew better than to just take us straight back to the hotel, so since we had to cross from the western side to the eastern side of Hyderabad and took the outer road along the perimeter to get there, she decided to have the driver take us through the middle and show us a few spots along the way.
Night trip through Hyderabad
As tired as we were (I had fallen asleep waiting to leave for the wedding and took a short nap on the way there, too) Puji’s mom had us mesmerized with the sites of Hyderabad at night. Our first destination was Charminar, and to get there we had to go through Laad Bazaar. As cool as Charminar was, it was hard to get over the business of the Laad Bazaar. Picture any action movie where there is a chase scene through a middle eastern (or Indian in this case) bazzar with open-air shops lining the streets that are half filled with carts holding fruits and veggies with their owners shouting the night’s prices, but add to it the road being full of people driving 4-wheelers (cars) with 2-wheelers (motorbikes) filling in the gaps. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I would say there was a definite cacophony of sound with the mix of all of the different sounding horns (some would make the General Lee iconic horn sound like a calming bird’s chirp) and the shop/cart owners trying to attract potential customers. Add the smell of some street food vendors, and it was an incredible sight.
Charminar is at the center of the bazaar occupying a roundabout and consisting of four pillars (“Char” and “Minar” translate to four towers in English). It dates back to the very beginning of Hyderabad’s cityhood, back in 1591. It is a mosque built in commemoration of the end of a plague that had befell the city during the reign of the 5th sultan of the Qutub Shahi dynasty. A cool potential fun-fact about Golconda Fort and Charminar – it is believed there is a tunnel stretching from Golconda Fort to Charminar (9 km away) that the royals would have used to escape if the fort were to ever come in danger).
An American in India 