India 4

India 4 - Hyderabad 1

We got a short flight into Andhra Pradesh's largest city, Hyderabad (8 million people!). You might expect that in a city that large in a foreign country, it might be good to have a guide? Well, you would be right! Our friend, Chalam, set us up with one of his former students, Chandra, to help take us around and show us the sights. Chandra was wonderful as a guide! He was a very smart guy and was exceptionally knowledgeable about Hinduism (which was great for us as we were trying to soak up as much information about this interesting religion as we could!). He was also great to have to translate in the many establishments in which people did not speak good English! Hyderabad is a mix of cultures, ranging from very high-tech (some people call it Cyberbad!) to ancient. This part of India was ruled by Muslim sheiks for hundreds of years and is still the section of India that has the highest concentration of Muslims in India. There have been some terrorist incidents there over the past few years, and this has brought tension between the Muslims and India's most common religious people, the Hindus. We didn't see any of this tension ourselves, but did read about it. We ended up not going to the "cyber" part of Hyderabad and stuck with the historical sections, as you will see below.

When we were in Hyderabad, it was nearing the peak of the Ganesh festivities. As we were driven to our hotel, we passed Hussain Sagar lake which was lined with several large cranes. Apparently the various groups bring their very colorful Ganeshes (see the pink one above) down to the lake and they are placed on large palates and submerged in the lake by these cranes. So, we saw MANY of these large Ganeshes all over the place, commonly covered with all kinds of flowers and other offerings to the God.

One of the major attractions in Hyderabad is Golconda Fort, a major fortress in the 1500's. This is a shot down from the higher portion of the fort. They were shooting a film of some sort, and you can see a throng of people and a few cars in the center-top of this picture.

Nearby the Golconda Fort are the Qutub Shahi Tombs. This is an ancient complex of various tombs of the Muslim rulers of Hyderabad. Here is a shot from one tomb looking over to the next. These tombs were crawling with green parrots, which was pretty cool!

Some of the Hindu Gods are quite nasty! These are some rock paintings in the Golconda Fort of some of these Gods killing their various enemies. It is NOT a pretty sight!

Both Chalam and Prasad warned us that the final day of the Ganesh festival could get pretty dicey in Hyderabad. Not long before we came (about one month), a terrorist bombing occurred in Hyderabad that was the work of a Muslim terror cell. That increased tensions between Muslims and Hindus in Hyderabad quite a bit. The Ganesh festival was the first major Hindu holiday since the bombings and thus there was some worry about "reprisals" against the Muslim community during the fervor of the festival. As you can see above, the government was taking this VERY seriously, and ~10,000 troops were dispatched to Hyderabad to keep the peace. Our friends suggested that we "get out of town" for that last day, so we took up their suggestion and "head to the hills" to Ramoji Film City (the Indian analog of Universal Studios)

Here's another shot from the Qutub Shahi Tombs. The richer people (shahs, etc.) would have the domed tombs while the well-to-do (but not ultra rich) would have the smaller stone tombs shown here in the foreground.

Ramoji Film City was OK but nothing to write home about. It might have been better if we weren't there in the "off season" when many things were closed down? The best thing about it was the food! Here is a shot of Steve in the opulent dining area (note the low number of patrons due to the off-season nature of our visit!). They had quite the spread of very good food in a buffet style layout for all 3 meals. It was great!

One of the things we were able to do during our stay at Ramoji Film City was take the bus tour around the studios. At one of the overlooks onto the grounds, we ran across this macaque. He was perfectly OK with you being there, but definitely had "his space"! If you got to close, he would give you a yell (as seen here!).