Hyderabad. The land of pearls. The land of Biryani. The land of the Nizams. And now yours, for a few days.
The moment you land in, you are greeted by a swanky airport. Though not one of the biggest, but definitely one of the most aesthetically designed. As you begin to step in, you immediately get a feel that the people are welcoming. You get a sense of being wanted. The taxi driver drove us through the wide-quicky-becoming-narrow roads of the city. Worth mentioning is the PV Narasimha Rao Expressway, fully elevated, a staggering 11km piece of concrete and charcoal build in the narrow congested streets of the city in a record 2 years. It would have taken at least thrice the time to build something like that in Delhi. The city, in general, is clean, and free of filth and dirt. We put up in Basheerbagh, which seemed to be a nice area near to the Hussain Sagar Lake. The lake is to Hyderabad, what rivers are to most of the Indian cities - its lifeline, its identity.
One of the must visit places on every traveller's itinerary is the world famous Ramoji Film City. And it truly lives up to its name. You must take out one full day for this man made wonder, although you can even keep two, if you have the luxury. Far from the city yes, but totally worth it. You can take a cab or travel with a group of people in one of the tourist buses from the city. Inside Ramoji, there are guided tours organised by the film city itself. They have faked almost anything and everything from villages, towns, foreign locations, trains, airplanes, mughal gardens, forts, palaces, caves, you name it, and they either have it, or will make it for you. So much so, we doubted whether the washrooms real or fake :P We saw the munnabhai "hospital", the sooryavansham "bunglow", the Oo la la gardens, and the like. They have live dance shows, stunt shows, mini world tours, the art of film making (or faking) live, etc. Overall, everything a tourist can ask for from a day.
I'll quickly jump onto food. Ohh yes, I'm starting with Biryani. We had the trademark Hyderabadi Dum biryani from Paradise. It is a very famous restaurant serving biryani since1953. Though they have other outlets, the primary one is on MG Road, Secunderabad. It is so huge, and they have like almost 5-6 restaurants at the same place with different ambience and facilities. Doesn't matter where you sit, the food remains the same. What appeared to be almost plain, white rice, at first, came out to be something I had not tasted before. If you thought biryani is "good" if it is very colourful, with so many vegetables, very spicy, you were all so wrong. Real biryani is almost plain, no colour, with a subtle layer of spices and veg gravy in between. The mirch ka salan served alongside is again not spicy. Its rich in flavours. When you eat this combo with the raita, it leaves that rich taste in your mouth, which can only be relished, not explained.
Hyderabad has two trademark sweets - Double ka meetha and khubani ka meetha. The former being a bread pudding and the latter a sweet made from apricots best savoured with ice cream. Both are a must try when you visit. Tea is again hugely popular in Hyderabad, just like all other southern states. But it is made quiet differently. It is called Irani tea where the tea syrup and milk are made and kept ready separately and mixed only at the time of serving. I wouldn't say it tasted like really great or something, but still worth trying simply for appreciating the unique style of making it. One unique variant of Dosa you must try is Pesarattu. Its a local Andhra cuisine and is made of moong dal instead of the regular urad dal and tastes great. Overall the food quality was great in Hyderabad. In general, most of the local shops serve south indian dishes. North Indian food is mostly found in established restaurants.
As for the places to see, you have Charminar, which still tops the list. Mecca Masjid and Chowmahalla palace are nearby. Chowmahalla palace normally doesn't figure on people's list, but I guess a lot less is written and talked about it than it deserves. It is a palace where the Nizams lived. The palace has an awe inspiring central hall, lovely gardens, a great collection of vintage cars, and much more. Must experience. Then there is the Salarjung museum, I remember this place, more for the trademark Hyderbadi kulfi it serves in its cafeteria, than for its otherwise excellent collection of relics and artifacts. Laad bazar is nice for a walk from Charminar to see the bright colours of the bangles becoming brighter when the ladies adorn them. Lac and metal work bangles are famous.
Birla Temple, an imposing structure, is a lovely place to visit, very near to the lake. Being built on elevation, provides a lovely view of the lake and of the "yellow city" Hyderabad. I take the liberty to coin this name to the city, since, just like Jodhpur is blue and Jaipur is pink, Hyderabad appears all yellow from above. Seems every house and every building has been painted yellow.
Local APSTRC buses make for a great way to move around in the city. You can ask the locals for help on bus numbers and routes and they're always ready to help. To your utter pleasure, the route numbers and destinations are also written in English for your convenience. It is the cheapest, and I would say, the best overall (and you would understand the reason later when I talk about autos), way to commute.
Some of the places we couldn't go to for paucity of time. The Golconda Fort and Qutb Shahi tombs. High court and Osmania hospital. Don't get me wrong, I'm not getting cases registered against you or getting you admitted. These are legacy building which must be seen. Shilparaman (in short Dilli Haat of Hyderabad). Nearby Hitech City (can easily be missed if you've seen the ones in Gurgaon or Bangalore). Lumbini park, NTR gardens and there are many more. Boating in the Hussain Sagar is definitely something we missed on. It was closed for ongoing security installations following the recent bomb blasts. The Prasad IMAX theatre is huge and should be experienced. MMTS is what the local trains are for Mumbai, though they run at a much lesser frequency. However, I've read that they run on time and are a good way to cover the otherwise vast expanse of the city.
Pearls can be bought from almost anywhere in Hyderabad. Though one needs to be really careful of not buying the fake ones. MR jewellers is a leading name in the pearl industry and a really trusted one too. They have uncounted outlets in the city and run by one or the other member of the same family. Go to anyone closet to you.
Ok guys. Pleasantries done. Time for some eye openers. The moment you land in Hyderabad, and you're done with the expressways n all, you land right in the traffic jams of the city. The city is completely jammed at almost all times of the day. Jams, worse than you would find in any other major city. The roads are narrow with hardly any scope of expansion. They have made some of the roads one-way. But there is a greater need to follow Bangalore's model of making almost all roads one-way. But what's worse than the jams, is the complete lack of road sense in the city. The drivers of almost all cadres of vehicles are highly undisciplined. Merely being on the road is so frustrating and feels unsafe.
Electricity problem. You can easily deny the importance of its mention here with the argument that this is a perennial problem in the country. Agreed. But then you really don't expect darkness to eclipse the view of the most expensive gold and silver laden Nizam era sarees inside one of the leading tourist showcases, the Chowmahalla Palace. They are almost not visible without the lights, and the entire glory is lost. They have power cuts. Ok. Don't they even have backup.
Whether it is the shopkeepers in Laad Bazaar or the autowallas in any part of the city - H stands for Haggling, and not for Hyderabad. Bargaining for bangles would make you forget Palika Bazaar. The entire places is dotted with the "pearl people", who almost garland you with their offerings (pun intended). The autowallas are a unique proposition. They either charge you extremely high (the norm) and then haggle, or charge you extremely low. Now, its more important to understand the latter. The specially quoted "low fare" is because your trip will be routed through one of "their" pearl shops in the city. The underlying business statement is this: The autowalla gets an quantity of rice in kgs from the shopkeepers to the number of people it brings to their shops. Avoid completely. Better to pay higher than to be trapped.
The beautiful Charminar has been the worst affected. The entire place chokes with autowallas almost stepping onto your feets or with hawkers screaming away to glory. I guess had it not been for the fence around the immediate periphery of the monument, people would have started selling goods and food items from inside it or even on its top. Disgraceful. They must take some lessons from India Gate or even the Gateway of India on how to upkeep such historical monuments.
Hyderabad used to be famous for the its black metal art. It was so disheartening to see the entire market being replaced by coated aluminium cast figures. Shopkeepers say that black metal is too expensive now and found no buyers at that cost. Art lost.
One really surprising thing was not finding any Cyber cafe in the city to web checkin for our return flight. We covered large portions of city during our stay but didn't find a single one. Strange. Or was "hi tech" restricted to the Hi-Tech City? Btw, who considers internet "hi tech" anyways.
My stay in the city was only for a few days, and I could be quite naive in my observation here, but I sensed some kind of a language crisis in the city. You can easily disagree with me and I won't mind. The locals talking to us in Hindi was appreciable, but it sounds peculiar once you hear them talking (or trying to) to each other in Hindi rather than in their mother tongue Telugu. Though I'm still trying to understand the reasons and not arriving at anything, I found it quite disturbing, to quote it more extremely. And English, of course, is miles from being embodied too.
Overall, a huge city, with a rich past, and a huge potential. Lost somewhere. I went to this place looking for the "pearl". Found the pearl. The pearl is Hyderabad itself. But coated with dust. Clean up. Let the pearl shine again.
