Charminar - The heart of Hyderabad

Sorry that I didn't post in a while, but I had such a weekend that involved meeting new friends (easy here in India), touring, and landing up in the hospital. More about landing in the hospital with my next post!

It started out on Friday night.

I had spoken a few times during meals at the IBM guest house with a very nice guy named Kaustubh Roy Chowdhury.

BTW, do you have any idea how to really pronounce that name? I don't. After embarrassingly asking him 20 times how to say his name, he finally just told me to call him Roy.

Above is a photo of Roy. Perhaps it's not the best picture of him, but that's often how I saw him as we were riding along in the rickshaw.

Roy mentioned in passing that he would be visiting the centre of Hyderabad with friends on Saturday.

They were going to go to Charminar, a beautiful arched building at the centre of the city, try Biryani, buy pearls, and just have some fun together, and he asked me if I'd like to go with them.

I said I'd love to (does that surprise you?).

Later, as I was blogging late at night in the living room of my apartment, a nice looking and very friendly guy walked into the room and asked me if I was Earl.

He introduced himself as Ratul and said he was a friend of Kaustubh.

The guy in the photo with the red shirt talking on his phone is Ratul. He mentioned that he would also be going into Hyderabad centre with us and there would be a 4th guy coming along named Vijay.

I instantly hit it off with Ratul. We talked for over an hour and the long conversation ended with me rudely inviting myself to his house in Calcutta (Kolkata) for the Durga Puja festival at the end of September.

He seemed to not mind, and kept smiling that contagious smile of his. So, we continued sitting together till all hours of the night looking at cheap flights from Hyderabad to Calcutta!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durga_puja

The next morning, Kaustubh, Vijay, Ratul and I started off on our rickshaw pilgrimage to Charminar, the heart of Hyderabad.

The guy with the yellow shirt without a backpack is Vijay.

We were even blessed by a herd of goats strolling down the street which I'm sure had some sort of religious meaning to the Hindu's (almost everything does).

We grabbed a rickshaw and headed happily towards the centre.

Have you ever been to the circus where a tiny car comes rolling into the centre ring and then suddenly about 20 clowns come running out.

That's kind of the look and feel when 4 grown men plus the rickshaw rider are all cramped into a tiny little rickshaw.

That's how we did it all the way to the centre, while the 'mental' rider was following the stampede with his little rickshaw like a raging bull, tooting on his horn when ever he had an opportunity.

We were all on a mission! We were in search of adventure, pearls, history, and biryani and having a blast, joking and laughing the whole way.

The rickshaw driver was on a mission as well, he wanted to get us to our destination a.s.a.p. so he could quickly drop us off and rush to the next victim so he could earn his living.

After he dropped us off halfway to the centre, we struggled for about 20 minutes to find a rickshaw that was willing to drive us on to Charminar.

We finally found our next speed racer that agreed to taxi us forward with back aching speed.

Here's a little test, did you notice that one of the passengers in the above photo suddenly has a white t-shirt?

That's because people often just hop into the rickshaw and tag along for a while and hop off when they are close to their destination. At that time there were six grown men crammed into one tiny rickshaw!

After a while we came to a grinding halt and I realized why so many rickshaw drivers didn't want to take us to the centre. It was one giant traffic jam.

I would have suggested we get out and walk, but the streets and sidewalks were wall to wall rickshaw and we couldn't manoeuvre through it anyway.

Eventually we arrived.

It was very clear that we were in an old and ancient location.

I'm sorry to say that I could not say that it looked so beautiful.

The houses and buildings lining the streets of an older grandeur time had fallen hopelessly into disrepair and laid victim to piles and piles of advertisements from top to bottom that were all probably put up in the 1970's and people just couldn't bother to bring them down.

The people in the centre seemed less happy than what I've become used to in India and some of the sales men on the side were almost desperate / aggressive to get our cash.

In my experiences so far, I would smile at the people around me and they would light up with those lovely Indian glowing smiles, here in the centre, I did not have the same feeling.

To be honest, I did get a few nice reactions, but the smiles were more reserved and often the glances back were vacant or mistrusting.

This was the first location in all of India so far where I felt more like I was in a Muslim country than Hindu.

I was told that the centre of the city is 90% Muslim and it's clearly visible.

A lot of the men were wearing different versions of the little white Muslim caps called taqiyah's and the majority of women were wearing head to toe burqa's.

Here in this Muslim enclave, it seemed in place. And I must say, most of the Muslim men and women were very tall and thin and looked quite elegant covered in their flowing sherwani's and burqa's.

This was also the first time that I saw thin (dying) men on the streets and sidewalks where I was afraid to look too long because I was not sure if they were alive or dead.

I asked my day trip buddies what they thought about it, and they just gave a bit of an uncomfortable smile and that was that.

However, it was also quite clear that at one time it all must have been very beautiful. Hyderabad was one of the richest cities in India, maybe the world. It was a centre for trading pearls, diamonds and gems.

As we made our way towards the centre square, there were arches one after another on the streets, perhaps remnants of the old walled gates protecting the city, leading up to the giant 4 sided arch in the middle, Charminar.

When we arrived at Charminar, we wanted to go up to the look out half way to the top. At the entrance gate I experienced a dose of 'reverse' discrimination.

My Indian buddies were all charged 5 rupees and the guy at the gate told me that I had to pay 100 rupees because I did not look Indian.

I understand the concept, but I don't agree with it. I know a lot of people do, so I won't go into it here.

As we climbed the tower, I felt like I was climbing the tower of an old medieval castle. The walls were all uneven with rocks and ancient stones sticking out.

There were little tiny openings for windows and little tiny child height hallways heading off to mysterious closed off rooms and chambers.

The steps were too high apart from each other, just enough to make it, but wide enough to make it uncomfortable and to start giving pain in the knees.

Because the space was so small, the curve in the steps were really sharp, making one leg super tired from doing all the work and other leg was just being dragged along behind.

Actually, I like that kind of 'oldie' stuff. As I was ascending, my mind easily slipped into a time warp and I suddenly time travelled to medieval India, and of course in my fantasies, I was playing the part of the king of the castle...

The views were really good from the arched walkway high above the bustling and noisy city below.

There were endless interesting things to see from all four directions. I remember being amazed that so many people live in this city and that there were no really tall modern office buildings to be seen.

Hyderabad city has a population of 4 million people. But then again, house after house, as far as the eye can see, is cramped next to each other for kilometres all the way out to Kothaguda where I'm staying. At least this city lives in the centre, even if it is of humble heights.

After leaving Charminar, we decided to go in search of pearls along the huge square surrounding Charminar.

We looked for the nicest building we could find because we were all nervous about spending our money and walking away with some very high quality enamelled plastic, instead of high quality pearls at reasonable prices which this city is known for.

They say that you can tell if it's a pure quality pearl by holding a fire to it for over 30 seconds. Afterwards, you should be able to just wipe the black smoke markings away and it will look just as lovely as before.

Of course, when the pearls are already on the necklace, that's a bit hard to do because they were held together with string.

After running away in horror from several shop owners who seemed overzealous to get us into their shops of boggles and bangles, we passed a shop with only one chubby little boy in front who didn't care if we came into his shop or not.

To reduce the high pitched sales pressure, we decided that this would be the shop for us. 'Great Pearls' is a wonderful pearl shop run by two clever young business 'boys' who know their pearls. The youngest one looked like he's 12, but he told us he was 16.

Most Indian boys are super thin with that lean hungry look, but not these two pearl savvy boys. They knew their pearls so well, I'm sure they are well fed from all the good sales they make.

My friends bought buckets of beautiful pearl necklaces and ear rings for their wives and daughters and/or female friends back home.

I thought it was particularly cute that Vijay bought the cutest little pink pearl necklace for his 1 year old daughter.

Here in Hyderabad it's actually affordable, I wonder how much all those pearls would have cost them if they had bought them in Amsterdam!

Pearls aren't really my thing, but I had a blast having fun with my friends, checking out the quality of the pearls, pretending to be an expert (as if I had a clue) and kidding with the sales boys.

I didn't buy any necklaces and other girly pearly stuff. I'm going to be here for too long to buy some expensive pearls and leave them lying around in my apartment, tempting the cleaners. So I may come back later and buy something.

Actually, I wouldn't mind buying something for myself with a pearl or two, but it seemed that all the items for sale were for females.

After spending so much hard earned rupees, we were all fairly exhausted, and loaded down with buckets of pearls. Shopping for pearls can be hard on a man!

We decided to check off the last item of our Hyderabad Centre 'to do' list, and that was to eat biryani. We asked our two chubby brother sales 'boys' were we should go and they told us that the best place around Charminar is Hotel Shadab.

Really... it's pronounced Shut up! They say their d's like t's and the p's like b's.

I really loved the name so much. It gave me hours of pleasure just thinking about how funny the named sounded.

At least it's quiet at Hotel Shadab, because if not, you know what the hotel manager will yell at you! 'SHUT UP!' Ha ha ha! I guess you had to be there.

Anyway, so we went to Hotel Shadab (tee hee) to get us some heap'n help'n of Hyderabad hospitality.

The restaurant looked rather 'Indian elegant' with a lot of gold and opulent textures and fabrics in the carpeting, curtains and chairs. There were some huge fish swimming in an aquarium that looked like mini-sharks. I noticed a lot of women dining in burqa's.

With all this elegance, I was surprised when I went to the toilet, to find a smelly dirty room with just a hole in the ground to squat over and a window facing in so the men waiting their turn could check to see how the squatting guy is doing.

I know I may sound a bit spoiled with my American/Euro ways, but I just couldn't use it. It was too weird.

Later after the meal though, I REALLY needed to go (Indian food seems to go rapidly through me), so I put my dignity aside and I went ahead and immersed myself yet deeper into Indian culture.

Actually, as I was sitting... um... I mean squatting there, I notice how ergonomically efficient this way of using the toilet is.

Also, they have a water hose there so you can take, like a little bath when you're done. That's actually fairly hygienic. Ok, I won't go anymore into the subject for those who are not interested in those types of things. But if you get the chance, you should try it.

The meal was so-so.

Since before I came to India, all I heard about was the biryani and how fabulous it is.

I just don't see it?

Here is a picture of Ratul saying something humorous and Vijay being amused.

The biryani was good though. I could also imagine, if you finish off a pot of biryani, you would have enough energy to last you the whole day and beyond.

It's basically rice with chicken, meat, or vegetarian mixed in. The big fun of the meal was actually my 3 friends and watching all the exotic scenes and people go by. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyderabadi_biryani