Hyderabad Blues

I never expected this trip was going to be one of my best, unforgettable trips. The occasion was my colleague cum buddy, Vamsi's wedding at Hyderabad(On Friday, the 28th of March, 2008).

Manish, Salil and I were the three musketeers set to freak out in Cyberabad. Only preparations we had made was, booked tickets for onward and return journey, that made sure that we reach Hyderabad on Friday and come back to Bangalore on Monday. None of us had any idea of what are we going to do on Saturday and Sunday.
Our bus(Airavat - KSRTC volvo) got delayed in Majestic and I was worried for this bad start. I did not had a slightest hint that this was the only thing that was not going our way. We reached Secunderabad at 9:30, lucky us, we got down from the bus a 100 mts from the hotel where the reservation had been already made for us(Thanks Vamsi for the hospitality). Got freshened up and started our discovery. Ate biriyani(of course veg for me ;)) at Paradise and felt like walking to get rid of heaviness. We walked on the road that was leading to the wedding venue, and after a while, we reached the venue!!! Probably we were the first guests to reach the venue!! It was about 3 kms from the hotel.

Chatted with Vamsi and had nice, chilled tender coconut water(gulped another cup each later!!). We were again forced to have lunch there, which of course had nice dishes. After loading our tummies to the brim, we had no choice but to walk back to hotel. Back at the hotel, Manish and Salil kipped down to catch some Z's. I was watching TV and never realized that I too had dozed off on the chair.

Evening, came Salil's buddy, cool dude Abhinav, who told us that he would take us out on both days in his car. I never expected that we are going to this lucky. Evening, attended the wedding. Well, the knots were tied at around 10:30PM, most of the hall was empty by that time, strange that people had already left after relishing the sumptuous dinner. We too had our tummy-full of nice food. We had already gulped down 4 cups of fruit juice before that.. Another walk to hotel followed.

Vamsi and Rajivalochana

Wish you both have a wonderful married life and live happily ever after

Day 1, Saturday: Real fun started on Saturday. Manish and I set out for the Hussain Sagar Lake and walked on Tank bund, Necklace road and visited Sanjeevaiah park which is known for bird watching. Abhinav and Salil picked us up from the park. We went to Golkonda fort which is in ruins, built during 16th century. It has got some chambers whose roof(dome) is acoustically built with symmetric reflecting hollow diamond shape. If you clap exactly under the dome, the sound echoes several times and the echo can only be heard if you stand witin 7 feet from the center. It is an amazing architectural masterpiece. Did some hiking there to reach top of the fort. One can get a nice view of Hyderabad city from the top.

Tanker - on tank bund

Sanjeevaiah Park

Sanjeevaiah Park - another view

Golkonda Fort - From Entrance

Golkonda Fort - Side view

View of City from top of Golkonda fort

Then we went to the place that all 3 of us were waiting for. The High-Tech city. The drive through posh areas of Banjara Hills, GachiBowli was wonderful with eye-catching bunglows and luxury. We were mesmerised by the magnanimity of the Microsoft campus, wonders of ISB at GachiBowli. We were spellbound by the stunning architecture of ravishing Cyber towers at Hi-Tech city, google campus... I am wordless as I am writing this line. I thought this place is the heaven for mortals like us, Software Engineers. No doubt all three of us were thinking of updating our resume!!!

Entrance to Indian School of Business

Microsoft - My dreamland!!

After all this wonderful, heavenly Cyber paradise, Abhinav took us to another paradise for food. Ohri's Baseraa. An awesome place for food lovers where quality is never compromised, at the same time justifying quantity and price. I had nice, huge batura with chana. Ice cream is the speciality of this place. I would vouch for this place to anyone visiting Hyderabad to visit one of Ohri's(They have some 20 branches).

Chana - batura

The Titanic Ice cream

Then we decided to watch a movie in Prasad's IMAX. From local news paper we found that 10000 BC was playing in the evening. Amazingly, we got tickets for the movie which was about to start in 1 hour on a weekend. Can't imagine this in Bangalore, can we? Tickets are so cheap, for IMAX it was just Rs.150. The theater had many attractions. We took plunge into the haunted house and scared the inmates(scarers) to their life!!!

Movie was ok-dokey except for some fine graphics. I am planning to have a separate post about the movie, so watch out.

Thus, our wondeful, eventful saturday ended with sweet memories.


Day 2: Sunday

Started extremely relaxed, no hurry whatsoever. Visited old city, Charminar and Salr Jung Museum. It is a huge museum with a lot of personal collections of Salar Jung III. It takes about a day to see all the stuff. There is a famous musical clock, luckily we were there just in time when it timed 2'O clock. We spent somemore time until it started boring. Had lunch at famous bavarchi's, I didn't personally like the food.

The historic Charminar

We set out to the Runway9, which is a theme park with go-karting, shooting, archery, bungee jumping etc. We raced our nerves, had good luck at shooting as well with 3 of 6 hits. Archery was ok-dokey as none of us are descendants of Arjuna. I managed to send my arrows within the boundary of the bullseye.
It was time to pack up and say bye-bye to the wonderful city of Hyderabad. When we reached station, our midas touch was still not fading. Our coach stopped right in front of us, where others were left to run to reach their's. Though it is called Garib Rath, it is a posh train with nice interiors. Each coach had heating ovens and refregerators to keep colas chilled. It was comfortable ride to Bangalore ant the train reached on the dot at 7:05AM. I was still lucky to get the bus to my home without even waiting for a minute.

Interior of so called Garib rath!!

It was a wonderful, most relaxed, unforgettable trip to Hyderabad. Hyderabad is very vast, spacious city which is not behind any other city in pollution. Hussain Sagar is a polluted lake that stinks. It has huge parks and a lot of greenery is well preserved.