I left Warangal on a train bound for Hyderabad, about 85 miles to the southwest, just before 10 on the morning of the 20th. It was crowded and I sat on my backpack near an open door, with two young Indians sitting on the floor in front of me with their legs dangling out the doorway. I had a good view of the countryside, with cotton growing and lots of outcrops of big boulders. Those marauding transvestites came through again, snatching the glasses of one of the fellows sitting in front of me when he didn't give him as much as they wanted. I snatched them back and returned them to the guy. For some reason, the transvestites for the most part leave me alone.
We passed a fort on a big, rocky hill on the way and arrived in Secunderabad about 12:30. Hyderabad and Secunderabad are twin cities, the former mostly south of a large man-made lake and the latter north of the lake. I think it's all now one large municipality, one of India's largest cities with something like five to ten million people. From the railway station, I took an autorickshaw through the clogged, polluted streets to a good hotel in Hyderabad and about 2:30 began to walk south along the very busy streets to the Musi River. Hyderabad was founded by the Qutb Shahi monarchy in 1591 along the Musi River. It was conquered by Aurangzeb (or actually his son) in 1687, but in 1724 (soon after Aurangzeb's death in 1707), as the Moghul Empire began to fall apart, the Nizam (or Governor) of Hyderabad became independent for all intents and purposes. The Nizam sided with the British in their struggles in the late 18th century with the French and Mysore in south India and became a faithful ally of the British. Hyderabad was the largest (about the size of France or Italy) and highest ranking of the princely states under the British Raj.
Along the now dirty, polluted Musi River are three huge building built around the 1920's. The first is the very run down Osmania Hospital, which was first rate when built. It is white, with many impressive domes. On the opposite (south) side of the river is the High Court, with red domes. It is in much better shape. I walked along the filthy river and crossed it near the third of these buildings, the City College, where boys were playing cricket in the yard and a student showed me around inside. Passing the heavily secured High Court, I turned south along a clogged thoroughfare, passing all sorts of shops and street side vendors, and eventually reached the Charminar, built at the city's founding. It is a four sided arch, about 100 feet wide on each side, with two stories perched high above the street and four minarets rising to more than 180 feet above the ground. It is beautifully decorated and the area was full of people. You can climb up narrow staircases to the first floor for the view, but it was near closing time, so I left that till later. The story above is a mosque, now closed. I watched the big crowds and talked for a while with a friendly English speaking guy. Hyderabad is largely Muslim and a very large proportion of the women were veiled and dressed in black robes. Nearby are the bazaars, which were also clogged with people. About 6, as it was getting dark, I took an auto rickshaw back to my hotel. For dinner I had an "Andhra Meal," with lots of rice and four vegetable dishes served on a banana leaf, with a banana and pan (a betel nut concoction) for dessert.
The next morning about 9 I took an autorickshaw to the Golconda Fort, which used to be west of Hyderabad but now is surrounded by the city. This is quite a fine fort, perched on a rocky hill about 400 feet high. (Hyderabad is at about 1600 feet elevation, I think.) There had been forts here previously, but it was the Qutb Shahis in the 16th century who made the fort what it is. They established their independence from the Bahmani Empirre in 1518 and Golconda was always their main fortification, even after Hyderabad was built in 1591 because of disease arising from water scarcity at Golconda. There were three rings of defensive walls, and I passed the middle one, perhaps a little less than a mile, from the citadel on my arrival. I wandered around inside for almost five hours. Lots of people were arriving when I arrived at 9, but by late morning they were pouring in. I wandered around the gardens and palaces and then climbed up the rocky hill to the durbar hall on the summit, where there were great views, despite the ever present Indian haze, of the lower walls and the countryside. You could see the domed Qutb Shahi tombs to the north, just beyond the second set of walls. This set of walls has eight gates and 87 bastions. The weather was really very nice, warm and sunny (in the mid or high 80's), but not too hot, and in fact cool in the shade. It is supposed to be very hot here in April and May. I walked down to the extensive palaces at the foot of the hill. There were bats in part of the harem. There are big water tanks and the remains of terracotta pipes. Water wheels used to help transfer water up to the summit. Golconda was fabulously rich, famous for its diamonds, from the diamond mines south along the Krishna River. In fact, the Koh-i-Noor, the huge diamond now a part of the British royal crown, came from Golconda.
I planned to walk to the Qutb Shahi tombs, but was told they were closed that day, a Friday, so after a small lunch just outside the citadel walls, I walked through the streets to the Naya Qila, or New Fort, dating from the 17th century (I think) and adjacent to the second set of walls. A golf course has been created inside the fort walls in the last couple of years, with smelly waste water used to water the grass. In places I saw the water foaming into a thick lather, quite odd and unappealing. I stopped to see a giant baobab, brought from Africa and more than 80 feet in diameter, near a small mosque, and then climbed a couple of the bastions of the fort. A huge cannon, maybe 20 feet long, was on top of one, in part covered with weeds. A friendly security guard, who had worked as a truck driver in Saudi Arabia for years, showed me around and I sat and chatted with him next to an old mosque. The developer of the golf course came along, playing golf with his grandson and an American guy who I think was perhaps his son-in-law, and introduced himself, telling me about the golf course. I walked around some more and eventually through the town to the Fateh Darwaza, one of the big gates in the second set of walls, before getting an auto rickshaw back.
The next morning I took an auto rickshaw to the Mecca Masjid, just south of the Charminar. It is India's second biggest mosque, begun by the Qutb Shahis but finished by Aurangzeb, with room for 10,000 people in the courtyard and minarets rising to 75 feet. It is not particularly beautiful, though. There were many pigeon droppings and large nets to keep the pigeons from entering the enclosed areas of the mosque. Nearby are the graves of most of the Nizams, five of the seven, I think. A bomb went off at the mosque in 2007, so there is enhanced security. Leaving the mosque, I walked over and entered the Charminar. There isn't much to see inside after you climb up the narrow staircase, but the views are interesting. A couple of guys selling very pink cotton candy below spotted me, and happily posed for photos. It was crowded there, but somewhat less crowded that morning than it had been my first late afternoon there.
From the Charminar I walked over to the Chowmahalla Palace, built for the Nizams from about 1750 until the 1800's. It is actually four palaces, plus a beautiful durbar hall where the Nizams were crowned. The Durbar Hall had many spectacular chandeliers and a marble pedestal for the throne of the Nizam. In the 1930's and 1940's the Nizam was considered the world's richest man, with gold, silver and jewels stored in trucks in his palaces. The seventh and last Nizam, who ruled from 1911 to 1948 and died in 1967, was, however, an eccentric and miserly man who is said to have worn the same shabby clothes every day. He was a Muslim and wanted to unite with Pakistan in 1947. The Princely State of Hyderabad was surrounded by India and its population was overwhelmingly Hindu, although the city of Hyderabad was largely Muslim and there many Muslim villages. In 1948 the Nizam declared his independence and India invaded, crushing his army quickly, with much murder and rape following. You read nothing of this in the background history at the palaces and other places. The Nizam later became a sort of ceremonial governor of Hyderabad state until it was dissolved in 1956.
There were many very interesting photos in the palace, especially those of the daughter-in-law of the last Nizam. She and her sister, both daughters of the last Turkish Caliph, were married to sons of the Nizam in 1931 (in Nice, of all places). She was a beautiful woman. The captions say she was the most beautiful woman of her time, and she certainly married well, or at least financially well. Her son is the current, powerless, Nizam.
There was lots of other interesting stuff in the palaces, including paintings and ceramics, furniture and old automobiles, including a 1920's Fiat and Wolseley (which I have never heard of), both with starter cranks in front) and a 1950's Packard and Buick convertible, and even motorcycles, including a clunky looking Harley Davidson and one with a logo of a winged "W." I spent about four hours wandering through these palaces and then walked through the bazaars before making my way back to my hotel. Before independence, Hyderabad is supposed to have been full of wonderful palaces of the Nizam and his nobles, but most have been pulled down and replaced by ugly concrete buildings.
The next morning I took an autorickshaw back to the Golconda Fort, and then walked to the Qutb Shahi tombs, passing another gateway of the second set of walls along the way, with a stagnant moat along the walls to one side. I spent almost four hours wandering around the tombs of the seven Qutb Shahi monarchs, dating from the 16th and 17th centuries. The tomb of the last monarch is unfinished, as he was deposed by Aurangzeb in 1687 and died imprisoned in the fort at Daulatabad to the north, near Aurangabad.. The tombs have bulbous domes, said to be three-fourths of a sphere, set on square, usually multi-storied bases with the graves inside. In one tomb, the caretaker took me down below to the real grave of the king, using matches and my flashlight to guide our way. The tombs became increasingly large and elaborate as time went by. Besides the kings, there are tombs for at least one queen, a couple of hakims (doctors) and at least two dancers/courtesans. There is also a large bath building where the royal bodies were bathed before burial. The whole complex is a pleasant places, with lots of trees. Some of the tombs are in ruins, and others well kept up. There were big crowds there by midday.
I took an autorickshaw back to the city center and visited the State Museum in an old British era building. It contains some relics of the Buddha and copies of the Ajanta frescoes. (Ajanta was in the Nizam's domains.) There is also a very high, perhaps 20 or 30 feet, wooden cart for religious processions. Nearby is the Health Museum, which seems little changed since it was established about 1950. There is a photo of Nehru visiting in 1953. Despite its age, and in some way because of its age, it was interesting, with exhibits on diet and diseases and pregnancy, among other things. Formaldehyde bottles contained human fetuses from one to nine months old, plus several Siamese twins. Also nearby are the Public Gardens and the Legislative Chamber, formerly the Town Hall, with a very large statue in front of Gandhi sitting cross legged. I walked up to the 1970's Birla Mandir, a temple on a hill overlooking the lake, but didn't go in because of the long lines. I did talk with a engineer who moved here from New Delhi to work in the "Hitech City" that was built in the western suburbs starting in the late '90's. Hyderabad, nicknamed Cyberabad, is now India's leading IT center. He told me there are 350 businesses in Hitech City, which is solely commercial and not residential, and that you can't enter without ID and clearance.
The next morning I walked to Osmania Woman's College, centered on the crumbling former British Residency, built about 1800. It was built by the first British Resident, James Achilles Kirkpatrick, who dressed in Moghul style, married a Muslim princess, and was rumored to have converted to Islam. The huge building, however, is quite Western, with columns in front flanked by two British lions. Inside the dusty rooms of the cavernous, almost empty building are chandeliers, large mirrors, a few old portraits and a winding staircase to the second floor. It is a shame it is so dusty and deserted. Around it are newer buildings of the college, with lots of women students around when I was there, probably wondering what I was doing there. I was escorted by a cranky, old security guard.
From there I went to the Salar Jung Museum, a collection of a nobleman during the Nizam's time. The modern museum building was filled with people, which made viewing the contents difficult. I later read that the museum was averaging 13,000 people a day in this Christmas-New Year's holiday period, when many Indians travel, compared to an average of 4,000 on a typical weekday. And I was disappointed by the contents. The European stuff was somewhat interesting, if not particularly high quality, including a lot of paintings and sculpture by now obscure 19th and early 20th century painters and sculptors. Highlighted is the "Veiled Rebecca," said to be considered a masterpiece at one time. There is a photo of the Nizam gazing at it.
Nearby is the H.E.H. Nizam's Museum in an old dilapidated palace. (The H.E.H. stands for "His Exalted Highness," the only such title given to any Indian prince by the British.) A large part of the collection consisted of gaudy silver objects presented to the Seventh Nizam at the time of his Silver Jubilee in 1937. But there were also some interesting historical displays and one long room that contained, on both sides of the room, teak wardrobes two levels high and each about 230 feet long. Apparently, the Sixth Nizam, quite unlike the Seventh, never wore the same clothes twice. Some of his clothes are on display. In the museum compound are a couple of other very large palace buildings, one in very derelict condition, with broken windows, peeling paint and even some collapsing walls. I had an early mutton biryani dinner a little after 5 near the bazaars and then walked back to my hotel through the thick early evening traffic.
The next day was Christmas and I decided to take a tour and visit Ramoji Film City, which proudly describes itself (on a sign maybe 30 feet high) as the Guinness Book of Records holder of the title of world's biggest film studio, with 1666 acres and 47 sound stages, where not only Telegu (the language of Andhra Pradesh) movies, but movies in Hindi and other Indian languages, are made. It also is a big tourist attraction. It's about 15 miles from the city, in a hilly area, and it took our bus about an hour and a half to get there. The entrance fee is quite steep for India at 700 rupees (about $13), but there were thousands of people there. We arrived about 11 and stayed until 7, a lot more time than I would have preferred. (And yet an Indian lady, from Calcutta, told me at the end of the day that there just wasn't time to see it all.) There are dance shows and a weird stunt show on a Wild West set, including Deadwood Saloon, but where both the good guys and the bad guys arrive on motorcycles. They played to huge, appreciative audiences. I guess it's a little bit like a cut rate Disneyland, including a Wild West section (with a Gunsmoke Restaurant), a Hollywood section (with statues of Stallone as Rambo, Schwarzeneggar as the Terminator, Jim Carrey as the Mask and Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, all with many people posing happily next to them), and a "Fundustan" with rides.
I took a bus tour with several stops that passed by sound stages and sets, including one area said to be London, an airport entrance and a train station, among other places. We stopped by an enclosed area with hundreds of butterflies, large ones with magenta bodies and black wings, and I spent a while in there. A bonsai area was interesting, with even bonsai baobab and peepul trees. There was a fake cave with colored lights and a mock battle between a moving giant cobra and giant rat. I got back to my hotel about 8:30, had a late dinner and watched India and Pakistan play cricket on television.
I spent most of the next day at an internet cafe, with a couple of forays to a camera service shop conveniently close to my hotel to have a black fuzzy spot (apparently dust) removed from the inside of my camera. I had bought this camera just last March in Bombay, so it was still under warranty.
We passed a fort on a big, rocky hill on the way and arrived in Secunderabad about 12:30. Hyderabad and Secunderabad are twin cities, the former mostly south of a large man-made lake and the latter north of the lake. I think it's all now one large municipality, one of India's largest cities with something like five to ten million people. From the railway station, I took an autorickshaw through the clogged, polluted streets to a good hotel in Hyderabad and about 2:30 began to walk south along the very busy streets to the Musi River. Hyderabad was founded by the Qutb Shahi monarchy in 1591 along the Musi River. It was conquered by Aurangzeb (or actually his son) in 1687, but in 1724 (soon after Aurangzeb's death in 1707), as the Moghul Empire began to fall apart, the Nizam (or Governor) of Hyderabad became independent for all intents and purposes. The Nizam sided with the British in their struggles in the late 18th century with the French and Mysore in south India and became a faithful ally of the British. Hyderabad was the largest (about the size of France or Italy) and highest ranking of the princely states under the British Raj.
Along the now dirty, polluted Musi River are three huge building built around the 1920's. The first is the very run down Osmania Hospital, which was first rate when built. It is white, with many impressive domes. On the opposite (south) side of the river is the High Court, with red domes. It is in much better shape. I walked along the filthy river and crossed it near the third of these buildings, the City College, where boys were playing cricket in the yard and a student showed me around inside. Passing the heavily secured High Court, I turned south along a clogged thoroughfare, passing all sorts of shops and street side vendors, and eventually reached the Charminar, built at the city's founding. It is a four sided arch, about 100 feet wide on each side, with two stories perched high above the street and four minarets rising to more than 180 feet above the ground. It is beautifully decorated and the area was full of people. You can climb up narrow staircases to the first floor for the view, but it was near closing time, so I left that till later. The story above is a mosque, now closed. I watched the big crowds and talked for a while with a friendly English speaking guy. Hyderabad is largely Muslim and a very large proportion of the women were veiled and dressed in black robes. Nearby are the bazaars, which were also clogged with people. About 6, as it was getting dark, I took an auto rickshaw back to my hotel. For dinner I had an "Andhra Meal," with lots of rice and four vegetable dishes served on a banana leaf, with a banana and pan (a betel nut concoction) for dessert.
The next morning about 9 I took an autorickshaw to the Golconda Fort, which used to be west of Hyderabad but now is surrounded by the city. This is quite a fine fort, perched on a rocky hill about 400 feet high. (Hyderabad is at about 1600 feet elevation, I think.) There had been forts here previously, but it was the Qutb Shahis in the 16th century who made the fort what it is. They established their independence from the Bahmani Empirre in 1518 and Golconda was always their main fortification, even after Hyderabad was built in 1591 because of disease arising from water scarcity at Golconda. There were three rings of defensive walls, and I passed the middle one, perhaps a little less than a mile, from the citadel on my arrival. I wandered around inside for almost five hours. Lots of people were arriving when I arrived at 9, but by late morning they were pouring in. I wandered around the gardens and palaces and then climbed up the rocky hill to the durbar hall on the summit, where there were great views, despite the ever present Indian haze, of the lower walls and the countryside. You could see the domed Qutb Shahi tombs to the north, just beyond the second set of walls. This set of walls has eight gates and 87 bastions. The weather was really very nice, warm and sunny (in the mid or high 80's), but not too hot, and in fact cool in the shade. It is supposed to be very hot here in April and May. I walked down to the extensive palaces at the foot of the hill. There were bats in part of the harem. There are big water tanks and the remains of terracotta pipes. Water wheels used to help transfer water up to the summit. Golconda was fabulously rich, famous for its diamonds, from the diamond mines south along the Krishna River. In fact, the Koh-i-Noor, the huge diamond now a part of the British royal crown, came from Golconda.
I planned to walk to the Qutb Shahi tombs, but was told they were closed that day, a Friday, so after a small lunch just outside the citadel walls, I walked through the streets to the Naya Qila, or New Fort, dating from the 17th century (I think) and adjacent to the second set of walls. A golf course has been created inside the fort walls in the last couple of years, with smelly waste water used to water the grass. In places I saw the water foaming into a thick lather, quite odd and unappealing. I stopped to see a giant baobab, brought from Africa and more than 80 feet in diameter, near a small mosque, and then climbed a couple of the bastions of the fort. A huge cannon, maybe 20 feet long, was on top of one, in part covered with weeds. A friendly security guard, who had worked as a truck driver in Saudi Arabia for years, showed me around and I sat and chatted with him next to an old mosque. The developer of the golf course came along, playing golf with his grandson and an American guy who I think was perhaps his son-in-law, and introduced himself, telling me about the golf course. I walked around some more and eventually through the town to the Fateh Darwaza, one of the big gates in the second set of walls, before getting an auto rickshaw back.
The next morning I took an auto rickshaw to the Mecca Masjid, just south of the Charminar. It is India's second biggest mosque, begun by the Qutb Shahis but finished by Aurangzeb, with room for 10,000 people in the courtyard and minarets rising to 75 feet. It is not particularly beautiful, though. There were many pigeon droppings and large nets to keep the pigeons from entering the enclosed areas of the mosque. Nearby are the graves of most of the Nizams, five of the seven, I think. A bomb went off at the mosque in 2007, so there is enhanced security. Leaving the mosque, I walked over and entered the Charminar. There isn't much to see inside after you climb up the narrow staircase, but the views are interesting. A couple of guys selling very pink cotton candy below spotted me, and happily posed for photos. It was crowded there, but somewhat less crowded that morning than it had been my first late afternoon there.
From the Charminar I walked over to the Chowmahalla Palace, built for the Nizams from about 1750 until the 1800's. It is actually four palaces, plus a beautiful durbar hall where the Nizams were crowned. The Durbar Hall had many spectacular chandeliers and a marble pedestal for the throne of the Nizam. In the 1930's and 1940's the Nizam was considered the world's richest man, with gold, silver and jewels stored in trucks in his palaces. The seventh and last Nizam, who ruled from 1911 to 1948 and died in 1967, was, however, an eccentric and miserly man who is said to have worn the same shabby clothes every day. He was a Muslim and wanted to unite with Pakistan in 1947. The Princely State of Hyderabad was surrounded by India and its population was overwhelmingly Hindu, although the city of Hyderabad was largely Muslim and there many Muslim villages. In 1948 the Nizam declared his independence and India invaded, crushing his army quickly, with much murder and rape following. You read nothing of this in the background history at the palaces and other places. The Nizam later became a sort of ceremonial governor of Hyderabad state until it was dissolved in 1956.
There were many very interesting photos in the palace, especially those of the daughter-in-law of the last Nizam. She and her sister, both daughters of the last Turkish Caliph, were married to sons of the Nizam in 1931 (in Nice, of all places). She was a beautiful woman. The captions say she was the most beautiful woman of her time, and she certainly married well, or at least financially well. Her son is the current, powerless, Nizam.
There was lots of other interesting stuff in the palaces, including paintings and ceramics, furniture and old automobiles, including a 1920's Fiat and Wolseley (which I have never heard of), both with starter cranks in front) and a 1950's Packard and Buick convertible, and even motorcycles, including a clunky looking Harley Davidson and one with a logo of a winged "W." I spent about four hours wandering through these palaces and then walked through the bazaars before making my way back to my hotel. Before independence, Hyderabad is supposed to have been full of wonderful palaces of the Nizam and his nobles, but most have been pulled down and replaced by ugly concrete buildings.
The next morning I took an autorickshaw back to the Golconda Fort, and then walked to the Qutb Shahi tombs, passing another gateway of the second set of walls along the way, with a stagnant moat along the walls to one side. I spent almost four hours wandering around the tombs of the seven Qutb Shahi monarchs, dating from the 16th and 17th centuries. The tomb of the last monarch is unfinished, as he was deposed by Aurangzeb in 1687 and died imprisoned in the fort at Daulatabad to the north, near Aurangabad.. The tombs have bulbous domes, said to be three-fourths of a sphere, set on square, usually multi-storied bases with the graves inside. In one tomb, the caretaker took me down below to the real grave of the king, using matches and my flashlight to guide our way. The tombs became increasingly large and elaborate as time went by. Besides the kings, there are tombs for at least one queen, a couple of hakims (doctors) and at least two dancers/courtesans. There is also a large bath building where the royal bodies were bathed before burial. The whole complex is a pleasant places, with lots of trees. Some of the tombs are in ruins, and others well kept up. There were big crowds there by midday.
I took an autorickshaw back to the city center and visited the State Museum in an old British era building. It contains some relics of the Buddha and copies of the Ajanta frescoes. (Ajanta was in the Nizam's domains.) There is also a very high, perhaps 20 or 30 feet, wooden cart for religious processions. Nearby is the Health Museum, which seems little changed since it was established about 1950. There is a photo of Nehru visiting in 1953. Despite its age, and in some way because of its age, it was interesting, with exhibits on diet and diseases and pregnancy, among other things. Formaldehyde bottles contained human fetuses from one to nine months old, plus several Siamese twins. Also nearby are the Public Gardens and the Legislative Chamber, formerly the Town Hall, with a very large statue in front of Gandhi sitting cross legged. I walked up to the 1970's Birla Mandir, a temple on a hill overlooking the lake, but didn't go in because of the long lines. I did talk with a engineer who moved here from New Delhi to work in the "Hitech City" that was built in the western suburbs starting in the late '90's. Hyderabad, nicknamed Cyberabad, is now India's leading IT center. He told me there are 350 businesses in Hitech City, which is solely commercial and not residential, and that you can't enter without ID and clearance.
The next morning I walked to Osmania Woman's College, centered on the crumbling former British Residency, built about 1800. It was built by the first British Resident, James Achilles Kirkpatrick, who dressed in Moghul style, married a Muslim princess, and was rumored to have converted to Islam. The huge building, however, is quite Western, with columns in front flanked by two British lions. Inside the dusty rooms of the cavernous, almost empty building are chandeliers, large mirrors, a few old portraits and a winding staircase to the second floor. It is a shame it is so dusty and deserted. Around it are newer buildings of the college, with lots of women students around when I was there, probably wondering what I was doing there. I was escorted by a cranky, old security guard.
From there I went to the Salar Jung Museum, a collection of a nobleman during the Nizam's time. The modern museum building was filled with people, which made viewing the contents difficult. I later read that the museum was averaging 13,000 people a day in this Christmas-New Year's holiday period, when many Indians travel, compared to an average of 4,000 on a typical weekday. And I was disappointed by the contents. The European stuff was somewhat interesting, if not particularly high quality, including a lot of paintings and sculpture by now obscure 19th and early 20th century painters and sculptors. Highlighted is the "Veiled Rebecca," said to be considered a masterpiece at one time. There is a photo of the Nizam gazing at it.
Nearby is the H.E.H. Nizam's Museum in an old dilapidated palace. (The H.E.H. stands for "His Exalted Highness," the only such title given to any Indian prince by the British.) A large part of the collection consisted of gaudy silver objects presented to the Seventh Nizam at the time of his Silver Jubilee in 1937. But there were also some interesting historical displays and one long room that contained, on both sides of the room, teak wardrobes two levels high and each about 230 feet long. Apparently, the Sixth Nizam, quite unlike the Seventh, never wore the same clothes twice. Some of his clothes are on display. In the museum compound are a couple of other very large palace buildings, one in very derelict condition, with broken windows, peeling paint and even some collapsing walls. I had an early mutton biryani dinner a little after 5 near the bazaars and then walked back to my hotel through the thick early evening traffic.
The next day was Christmas and I decided to take a tour and visit Ramoji Film City, which proudly describes itself (on a sign maybe 30 feet high) as the Guinness Book of Records holder of the title of world's biggest film studio, with 1666 acres and 47 sound stages, where not only Telegu (the language of Andhra Pradesh) movies, but movies in Hindi and other Indian languages, are made. It also is a big tourist attraction. It's about 15 miles from the city, in a hilly area, and it took our bus about an hour and a half to get there. The entrance fee is quite steep for India at 700 rupees (about $13), but there were thousands of people there. We arrived about 11 and stayed until 7, a lot more time than I would have preferred. (And yet an Indian lady, from Calcutta, told me at the end of the day that there just wasn't time to see it all.) There are dance shows and a weird stunt show on a Wild West set, including Deadwood Saloon, but where both the good guys and the bad guys arrive on motorcycles. They played to huge, appreciative audiences. I guess it's a little bit like a cut rate Disneyland, including a Wild West section (with a Gunsmoke Restaurant), a Hollywood section (with statues of Stallone as Rambo, Schwarzeneggar as the Terminator, Jim Carrey as the Mask and Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, all with many people posing happily next to them), and a "Fundustan" with rides.
I took a bus tour with several stops that passed by sound stages and sets, including one area said to be London, an airport entrance and a train station, among other places. We stopped by an enclosed area with hundreds of butterflies, large ones with magenta bodies and black wings, and I spent a while in there. A bonsai area was interesting, with even bonsai baobab and peepul trees. There was a fake cave with colored lights and a mock battle between a moving giant cobra and giant rat. I got back to my hotel about 8:30, had a late dinner and watched India and Pakistan play cricket on television.
I spent most of the next day at an internet cafe, with a couple of forays to a camera service shop conveniently close to my hotel to have a black fuzzy spot (apparently dust) removed from the inside of my camera. I had bought this camera just last March in Bombay, so it was still under warranty.
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