Tuesday morning, we met with Vasu's friend Bhindu (an attractive young woman) at a bus stop and went to Sangheethi(?) restaurant for breakfast. Then we went (by auto?) to Golconda Fort. Golconda Fort was built in the 13th century, on the site of a Telugu temple, by the Qutb Shahi, Muslim rulers who had conquered the area. Succesive generations of rulers had expanded the fortifications and palace until it covered a couple square miles. It has now mostly fallen into ruins. We hired a guide at the gate to give us a tour. He described the various structures and their history in both Telugu and English, but he moved very fast (I guess he had wanted to get lots of tours in that day). We would stop for pictures or to look at something interesting or a view, and suddenly he would be a hundred feet away.
After getting some cool drinks (and being besieged by beggars), we caught a bus (?) and then took an auto into the Muslim quarter to Charminar, a structure built in 1591, possibly to commemorate the end of a plague. It is called Charminar because of its four tall minarets (char means 4 in Hindi and Urdu). It sits in a circle at the intersection of two major streets. People can walk (or stand) under the high arches at ground level and there is a small mosque above the arches. You could call it Hyderabad's equivalent of the Arc de Triomphe. From there, we walked past the Mecca Masjid (mosque) and the Ayurvedic Hospital (which looks like a mosque) and went to the Salar Jung Museum. This museum houses what I am told is the largest one-man collection in the world. Most of the items in the museum were collected by Salar Jung III, a wealthy soldier and diplomat who lived around the turn of the century. We spent about four hours in the museum and still saw less than half the collection. Salar Jung was not a specialist in collecting; there is some of just about anything one might collect in the museum from Buddhist artifacts to medieval Indian paintings to Japanese dolls to European sculptures. Cameras are not allowed. After some more cool drinks in the museum snack bar, we caught a bus and then an auto to get back to the hotel. Vasu took Bhindu home while Krishna and I rested. We had dinner at Amupama restaurant, next door to where we had had breakfast.
After dinner, we went to a park beside Hussain Sagar, the large artificial lake in Hyderabad. There, we watched the Hyderabad Musical Fountain, a computer-controlled fountain that turns on and off a variety of sprays and lights in coordination with amplified music, after a recorded introduction in Telugu, English and Hindi. In this very modern place, one could have easily been in New York or Paris (except for the relatively narrow range of ethnic groups). Next we walked along the Tank Bund, the road across the dam of the reservoir (reservoirs are called "tanks" in India). The road is lined with statues of people important to the history of Andhra Pradesh. At the other end of the road was a commercial area where all the signs were in English (none in Telugu, Urdu or Hindi). We had some soft drinks, then headed back to the hotel (?).
We bought tickets for a private bus and boarded the bus down the street. Normally, the private buses are faster than the state buses, but the bus had a flat tire and at another point encountered a traffic jam--it turned out that someone had hit a cow and traffic in the two directions was having to take turns going around it. We didn't stop in Suryapet, but at a private stop area with restaurants, etc. at the midpoint. It was very late by now, but I didn't sleep much.
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