[13.12.2009] On day one of our trip to Hyderabad we slept until lunch time and then set off in our taxi to try to see the Golconda Fort. After just a couple of minutes in the car it started to rain and as we drove it got steadily worse. Since we were hoping to go to a sound and light show in a ruined fort, it soon became apparent that going there probably wasn’t the cleverest idea I'd ever had. Remembering my quick scan of the tour guides that morning, I took a decision to cancel or postpone the fort and I asked the driver if he could take us to the Salar Jung museum instead. It was the only place I could [plus]

[13.12.2009] If you had asked me to name one famous thing associated with Hyderabad before we went there it have been the Charminar. It must be on every website and on the cover of every map or guidebook of the city ever printed. It's a fascinating looking building that might not quite have the lure of the Taj Mahal or India's great palaces but it pricked my imagination. If you'd asked for two famous things, the second would have been Biryani, the rice-based dish for which the city is famed but the Charminar would have been a long way ahead of the biryani. There's something about the buttery-yellow buildin [plus]

[13.12.2009] The Birla Mandir - or Birla Temple - in Hyderabad was the second of the Birla Mandirs that I have visited, the other being in Jaipur. I visited that first one on Christmas Day 1996 during the first of my visits to India. Aside from being so white that it almost glowed in the moonlight and floodlighting, not too much of the visit stuck in my mind except the tale we were told that it had been built by a famous rich man and his family. I didn't give it a lot more thought until recently. Between that first visit to India and our recent visit to Hyderabad I'd come across the Birla family name ma [plus]