Secret Recipes and Rip-Off Rickshaws

If you're going to become a nervous flier, the start of a month which will entail six flights isn't the ideal time to do it. But you can't control these things and Tom got edgy on the textbook landing into Hyderabad.


I remember the arrival more for the first of a series of poor rip-off attempts from auto-rickshaw drivers. Even though we'd used the airport pre-pay taxi system he tried to drop us off in the wrong place, then wanting extra to get us to the agreed destination. It must be in the handbook, it wasn't until the final rickshaw back to the airport that we got the combination of agreed price and destination without having to fall out with the driver trying to blag a bit extra at the end. Even when using the meter there were fabricated extra charges to avoid. I know it happens all over the place, but here you could be sure they were going to try it.


It's otherwise been a pleasant few days where again we've not done a great deal. The chosen hotel (Hotel Suhail) has been a welcome return to comfort after Kolkata's offerings. We've sampled the Biryani, speciality of the area. We've had an extortionate few games of bowling and a much better value table tennis session, and I say that despite seeing only defeat with the bat.


Not forgetting the culture of course. A boat trip across the Husain Sagar lake took us to a Buddha statue, which if memory serves right ranks well up there as one of the largest stone Buddha's in the world. It was certainly big and the boat originally taking it to position on the lake had sunk taking lives with it. The statue was salvaged undamaged several years later.


The Qutb Shahi tombs and Golconda Fort were the other bit of sightseeing. Impressive tombs but we didn't stay long, being partial to a good fort we moved onto there to ensure plenty of strolling time. The guides around the entrance were particularly keen at the fort, more than anywhere else so far, sticking to us for a good ten minutes in. They explained to me there was no way I'd be able to understand the full history of it and appreciate it to the full without them, I explained to them that without meaning any disrespect to their fort I sometimes enjoy a leisurely walk round nice places without wanting to know everything about them.


Despite not knowing it's full history I enjoyed the place. If I was going to rank it in fort order that'd be a strange thing to do, since it's not a competition, but all the same it'd be second of the five so far.


In what has become a bit of a quest we also took a long walk to find a rumoured KFC. There are only so many curries it is healthy to eat in a day and our stomachs have on numerous occasions been telling us we crossed that line. The search was in vain and will continue...

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