Numero Uno- H'bad

We left for Hyderabad on 3rd night(Friday) by Charminar Express.
I don’t know if you are aware about this new system in our trains. There is a middle birth in the side too. Yes. Very sad, I know.
However, this sparked off some protests and by the first of march, this was supposed to be non-existent. But all the passengers sat in this fashion. The whole train was a mess. Half the people said it was there, the rest half were refusing to budge from their places. Finally when the TTC came, he changed all our seats- without a side middle. It was one big confusion. By the end of all this, it was about 7. Our bay had a woman with two kids- one a baby and another a 6 year old boy, and her dad. My god! They were such a pain! Really, I’m sure you don’t want to hear about this. I mean, imagine waking up a kid who is asleep and thrusting watermelon down his throat!

Anyway, the rest of the night was uneventful, thankfully. We had dinner and went to sleep. Surprisingly I slept pretty well, given the fact that I don’t usually sleep in the train.
We got off at Secunderabad station next morning. We took an auto to the hotel. What was very nice was, the auto driver actually refused to take us, but all the other fellows insisted that he could not refuse and had to take us. I was impressed, considering namma Chennai autokaarans! :D
Our hotel was supposed to be Belson’s Taj Mahal. The auto guy dropped us at Taj Tristar and went off. So we had to walk upto our hotel, which thankfull was on the same road.
The hotel and all was okay, except there would be power cut for 3 hours in the morn and 3 hours in the evening. However, we had the generator.

The first day itself we decided to go sightseeing. So we hired a car; a non ac car, since we didn’t expect it to be too hot. But how wrong we were!
Our first stop was at Salarjung Museum. It’s the largest museum that has one man’s collection of antiques. However, we got a little bored and tired by the end of the running in and out of the rooms.
One attraction at the museum was a singing clock. Like the cuckoo, a man comes out at every hour and rings a bell. As in, he strikes a mini bell with a stick. It’s a cute thing, several hundred years old. We caught the 12 ‘o’ clock strike just in time.
We had some lunch at the museum canteen itself. One man dropped his full dosa, chutney, sambar and all on the ground over there. Hee hee.
Then we went to Charminar. We climber upto the first floor. I believe, this monument was closed to the public because five sisters committed suicide from the top floor about 16 years ago. Now they keep only the first floor open.
One can see the High Court, Osmania University, Mecca Masjid, Laad Bazaar and various other places from the Charminar. Something bout this ancient building charmed me.
Next we went to Chowmahalla Palace. This Nizam’s palace was a sprawling palaceof several acres, having many mini palaces within it. This was a little exhausting and boring.
Our next destination was the Golconda Fort. We managed to climb until the top of the fort. The view was magnificient! This is the place where when you clap at the entrance, people can hear at the top of the fort. I was amazed. I had only heard about this.
We came back down for the sound and light show. It was only a quarter past six, and the show was only at seven, but we decided to wait. We wanted to catch the show from the first row. Then something frustrating happened. A group of people came in at a quarter to seven and happily put chairs in front and sat. My mom got so angry, (those of yo know her, should know) and she became her sarcastic self to those people. Evidently, they were some VIPs. This is when I really think our country has not progressed. What was worse was that no one else protested. Truly frustrating.
The sound and light show was really good. With Amitabh Bacchhan’s voice over and nice lightings, the show was good except for the two times when the current went off. The whole thing was about the history of Hyderabad and Golconda. You could check it up on the net, I don’t want to be a history writer.

We came back to the hotel, tired and weary. I don’t even remember what dinner we had. When we came back to the room, the AC was not working! But we didn’t realise.
We were so tired that we slept off anyway.