Hyderabad City Tour

HYDERABAD DARSHAN

AP Tourism is fab!! Actually I have not had any tourist activities which I can clearly remember but this was really informative & comfortable, BTW "DARSHAN" does not literally qualify for temples or likewise; its the hyderabad's most unique & sort after places to be visited .

We had booked the tickets with AP tourism board and were alloted a bus with a guide (conventional way). Got up @ 6:30am and then dressed and headed for YATRI NIVAS where we had to board our bus for the visit (dad dropped us (me & manoj) there).

8:00am : we boarded the bus and headed for another stop to pic up the rest of the tourists.
9:00am : Reached "BIRLA MANDIR", had to go on a upslope where the temple was built, it was totally made of white marble from rajasthan and was relatively a big area but very few idols i.e only around 5 to 6 were present and most important of all was BALAJI which was absolutely humongous to normal idol sizes. On the way back to our bus point (we had been given 9:20am as our meeting time) i.e. Reserve Bank of India office; we had गन्ने का जूस. On the way, we saw Charminar, Masjid from the bus (dint get down).
9:45am : We reached SALAR JUNG Museum, I had already seen it, so I was not all that excited as the other tourists. He took us inside ...we heard the clock's alarm (state of the art clock), then we went to see around 15 rooms out of the 150 odds rooms present. Came back to the bus point, had ice cream and a snap ;-).
10:50am : NIZAM Museum was our stop, got down crossed the road and went inside a school premises, the school as well as the Museum was build on some old architects plan (was nice), this experience was not all that good but I just likes one thing i.e. the OSMANIA UNVERSITY architecture, it model was present in his collection.
12:30pm : Reached NEHRO ZOOLOGICAL PARK and went for a Safari ride, saw some 3 tigers and 2 Lions but the problem was that they all were sleeping (dint get good snaps), also a भालू came to our safari van ;-). This was not that cost effective but manageable.
1:30 pm: After having a fruit meal outside zoo, we were informed of the bus heading to a restaurant. Still we made nullified the cost for the meal i.e. Rs 60/plate (especially the tomato dal was very good). It was a very green place and damn spacious, without a doubt it was an army premise coz it was really clean and secured.
2:45pm : we finally reached the GOLCONDA FORT and was really impressed with almost everything about the architecture and its history (its really a MUST see place), started with the curtain wall and then finally went all the way to the forts top most point, there we took some of the most memorable snaps.

The Picture on the right is a DIAMOND type architecture which personifies acoustics and the sounds can easily reach 450ft high to some other spot, it was used for internal communication purpose.
The picture on left give a panoramic view of the Golconda fort. It does not cover the whole of it but encapsulates most of it. The whole fort has been perfectly engineered which is quite boggling to me just coz its built in 18th century and it took almost 8 months for construction (now thats fast ;-)).

Half way to the Top Most point of the fort

PS: The trip was very informative and I feel Hyderabad is a place filled with quite a lot of history
PS: NIZAMS have lived the most lavish life of all, they had utmost comfort and immense power to overpower any damn force.
PS: Total visit took exactly 12hrs i.e 7am to 7pm