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Published: February 12th 2007
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Breakfast
Note the little flakes of 'not spicy' chilli! A quick snack The mission for today was to climb
Golconda Fort, and also check out the
Qutub Shahi Tombs. On the way however, we decided to make a short stop at a bakery to pick up something for breakfast. I was naively envisioning a croissant or something similar. I really should know better by now! Eventually I took something that looked like breadcrumbs on the outside and with peas and corn inside. The man behind the counter assured me was ‘not at all spicy’. I had to disagree with him when later on in the car I saw (and tasted) the chilli flakes on the inside. Let’s just say I was very glad I didn’t take the ‘a little bit spicy’ option! On the up side, the chilli took my mind of the fact that whatever it was that I was eating had been sitting out on the bench and been handled by who knows how many people (gloves, tongs etc are not something I’ve seen over here!)
The Qutub Shahi tombs Having both participated in an early morning round of eat-something-and-see-if-we-get-sick roulette (similar to Russian roulette, but with somewhat less permanent consequences) we headed off to the tombs. As with
all tourist attractions in Hyderabad, the entry price for non Indians was about 10 times the price for locals. Despite the fact that we were both wearing Indian blouses purchased the weekend before, they picked us for foreigners immediately. (My short kuti very pink as you can see in the pictures - I’m sorry Marg, I swear Nicole made me buy it! I don’t think it’ll be coming out much in Sydney though.)
Once we'd paid for ourselves, the car, the driver, our cameras, British colonialism and anything else they could think of to charge us for, we made our way into the big park where all the tombs are. There are seven (I think) in total, huge constructions which we had an awful lot of trouble fitting into photos! As with most places we’ve visited, the guides were very persistent. Despite us saying that we really didn’t want a guide one followed us for a while telling us bits and pieces. Eventually Razzak convinced him we didn’t want his services…and moments later another appeared! These guys do have lots of information, but we found they were really pushy and tried to hurry us along in the past, so
Golconda Fort
This is a small portion of the fort - note the number of stairs! we were glad when they all eventually gave up and left us alone!
At the main tomb, we asked a group of women who were sitting out the front if they’d mind if we took a photo (they looked so colourful). People here seem to just love being photographed so they agreed quickly and we got some good shots. And then it got weird - the men who were with them wanted us to take photos of them and to follow them to a different spot to get the Golconda Fort in the background. These guys were just dressed in normal clothes and frankly they really didn’t make for an interesting photo, but we figured we should humour them anyway….and then we made a dash for it as we hit the delete button!
Golconda Fort - a whole lotta steps After taking about a gazillion photos, Nicole and I made our way back to the car, ready to begin our assault on Golconda Fort. We’d been told that it was a 3km path around the fort, however what we were soon to discover was that at least 90%!o(MISSING)f that was made up of steep steps (and it
seemed like they were ALL going up). Hence the assault took place at a much slower pace than we’d intended.
At the entrance we were again swarmed by tour guides, some of whom followed us, again rattling off bits of history. However unless they were willing to give us a piggy back up the stairs, neither of us particularly wanted someone trying to make us speed us up and we were happy when they eventually left us to enjoy the tortuous climb in peace.
We eventually made it to the very top of the fort, which had quite an impressive view of the city. At this point we also discovered that rather than making us less conspicuous, wearing more local clothing seemed to just make us more approachable (I in part blame the bright pink that Nicole made me wear for this!). Quite a few people wanted to have their photos taken with us. We usually obliged, but it was a little odd.
It seems to be some kind of custom for lovers to write on the walls at the top of the fort - in spite of the numerous signs that suggest otherwise. People were not
even discreet about it! One guy was making his mark in right in front of the security guy. The security guy seemed more interested in his shoes than in asking him to stop, so I guess it must be one of those ‘rules’ that is really more of a ‘suggestion’, along with things like ‘drive on the left hand side of the road’, ‘stop at red lights’, ‘urinate in public toilets’ and ‘drive around roundabouts in the same direction as all the other traffic’.
While we wandered around the fort we ran into a whole bunch of school kids who I assume were on an excursion - it seems like lots of schools have excursions on Saturdays in India! They were all very cute, wanting to shake our hands and very determined to get into our photos! Lots of people were quite interested in our cameras - I noticed Nicole had a number of people peering over her shoulder to watch the LCD screen on the back while she was taking photos.
A treat to end the day with Most of the day was taken up by the fort, but really it’s best described by the photos we
took, so I’ll move on to the final entertainment for the evening - a trip to ‘the best icream parlour in Hyderabad’. Razzak took us to Famous Icecream for a nice frozen snack to help us cool down after our long climb in the Indian sun. Famous Icecream is an outdoors kind of setup with an icecream cart that they serve from. Once we’d sat down at a table and been given our menus we took a moment to look around. One type of ice cream was ordered by the slice and each slice was cut off of a larger block of ice cream that came in a rectangular cardboard box (a little bigger than a Vienetta box). As we watched the guy pull the icecream out of the box with his bare hands, cut a slice, and put it onto an approximately clean plate (again, with his hands), we reminded each other of our new mantra - “don’t think about it , just eat it”. I thought I’d be clever and order the kulfi stick (reasoning that if it came on a stick, then there was no need for bare handed slicing). Unfortunately the plastic woollies type bag that
Photo time
It takes both skill and flexibility to get whole of the biggest tomb into one photo. all the (non-wrapped) kulfi sticks were in wasn’t exactly sparkling clean - “don’t think about it…”
To their credit (and our surprise), neither of us got sick AND the icecream was actually really really good. I’d even have it again! If you’re going, I recommend you close your eyes and order the kulfi!
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