Hyderabad and trains

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Today was a local holiday in the City and we could not visit some of the sites. Instead our guide took us to interesting less visited places which turned out well. Our first visit was to the Golaconda fort. This looks a little bit like an old fashioned castle withe crenellated walls. At the entrance there is a clapping gallery. It is designed to produce a loud echo sound like gunshot so that a message could be carried from the entrance gate below right to the top. The fort uses the existing rocks and the castle is built up from and between the rocks. There was a complicated system to pump water from reservoirs below by three separate water pumps to the top. The pumping was done by hand. Certainly a labour intensive method. The view from the top was hazy, but you can clearly see the ruins of the palace below. This was for the Qutb Shah kings.

We passed at a distance the Taj Falaknuma palace, a very expensive hotel.

We stopped at the Badshahi Ashurkhana. This was a mosque for mourning dating from C16. It has brightly coloured tiles in Islamic style, but not the same as Iran, Turkey or Uzbek style. The lower parts have been restored by painting in the designs, but most of the upper part is tile work.

The last visit was a short drive outside the city. We had the Pagiah tombs to ourselves and this was a lovely quiet oasis. These are C19 tombs in marble, stucco, jade, and with with some decorative windows of carved limestone. The afternoon light fell attractively onto he whites, grey and green. The photo show some of the roof decoration of the tombs in stucco

We enjoyed a farewell lunch with Mr Kannan - a rather good thali with a lemon pickle. This was a late lunch, but there was time to visit the Birla temple. This is a modern Hindu temple built in 1976 from Rajastan marble. The quality of the workmanship and the marble is high and I think it will stand the test of time.

The experience of an Indian sleeper train is difficult to describe. Everything is on a big scale, the length of the train, The number of sellers before departure. There were tbo beds on one side of the corridor and four on the other. We had a four to ourselves so there was plenty of room for luggage. There were no announcements or signs on the platform, but we managed to get off in Aurangabad.

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