An Outlet

29 December, 2016.

If I had to associate today with just one word, it would be 'Archeology'.

So Today, we woke up at 9. Our initial plan was to go this Fort called 'Golconda Fort' along with the 'Qutb Shahi Tombs' nearby. But the driver suggested we go to the famous monument 'Charminar' and something else. I'm quite sure now that he said this only because he had some work there. But we were easily manipulated so yeah, change of plans.

As usual, I slept the entire way to the city, only to get up when we were nearing the place.

Charminar is a beautiful monument and I was quite excited to see it. The literal translation is Four Pillars (Char- Four, Minar- Pillar). It was the biggest of the gates surrounding that part of Hyderabad. The only not-so-good part about it was that a part of it was under restoration so it didn't look as authentic as I would have liked it to.

We climbed up the stairs, which were very high and the staircase space was very congested and dark because we had to climb up from one of the four pillars. But after about 10 mins of slow climbing we reached the top and it was nice! There was a temple on one side, a huge mosque called Makka Masjid on the other. We clicked several pictures and read through the descriptions wherever possible.

After an hour, we came down and ate food at the local stall in the 'Lad Bazar' market in front of the monument. Ooh that food had rustic deliciousness to it if it makes any sense.

Anyways, after that we tried calling for our driver but he didn't pick our call for sometime. Maybe he didn't realise that we'd be done very fast and thought we'll take more time shopping at Lad Bazar. This is where we had a suspicion that he had some work here.

After visiting Charminar, we decided to go this museum called 'Salar Jung Museum'. We passed the 'Hussain Sagar Lake', where we had been two days ago, while on our way to the Museum. It looked very different in the daytime. But according to me, it looked better at night solely because of the lights.

Anyways, we reached the Museum and I didn't realize how huge it was. We had to wait outside for some time, as there was a long queue to get to the ticket counter. We had to pay a certain amount to be able to click pictures from our own camera.

After obtaining the tickets, we went in and oh boy, the place is HUGE! The collection of the Museum was divided into Indian Art (27 Galleries), Middle Eastern Art and European Art(7 galleries combined) and Far Eastern Art (4 Galleries).

I was interested in going to every gallery possible so we saw quite a lot.

At first, we saw quite a lot of portraits and belongings of the Royal Salar Jung Family.

In the Indian Arts sections, we saw stone sculptures, bronze images, ivory sculptures, paintings, woodcarvings, jade carvings, metal-ware, manuscripts arms and armor, etc. We saw things from the Stone Age, Iron Age, etc. There was one gallery dedicated to only walking sticks that were used by the who's whos.

The Middle East section had various art objects from Persia, Syria and Egypt covering the diverse media like carpets, paper (manuscripts), ceramics, glass, metal ware, furniture, lacquer etc.

The collection of Far Eastern Art consisted of Sino-Japanese art objects of porcelain, bronze, enamel, lacquer ware, embroidery, paintings, wood and inlay work.

European collection comprised of art objects ranging from oil paintings, aesthetically attractive glass objects to majestic furniture, splendid examples of ivory, enamel ware and clocks.

There are a few things I saw that I think I might remember for quite a long time.

One of them is this beautiful sculpture in the zodiac sign sculpture gallery. It was called 'Veiled Rebecca'. It was a marble statue of exactly what the name suggests- a veiled woman. The details were so fine it was incredible!

Another memorable statue was the 'Double Statue'. The statue depicted an Evil Male from the front and a Good Female from the back. The irony hit me so hard!

One more thing that caught my interest was a chess boards carved from marble full with the various chess pieces!

The man attraction of Salar Jung Museum is this ancient wall clock that still works. Every hour, there a noise and the miniature drummer in the clock hits his drums equivalent to the hour. For example, when I went to see that clock, it was 4 'o' clock. So at the exact time, the small drummer came out and hit his drums four times. How interesting!

By the time we were done watching almost the entire museum, it was 5 in the evening. So we decided to go to the Birla Temple nearby. The temple is situated on a hill and one can see the entire Hyderabad city from up there. The white marbled temple was itself a very beautiful structure. We sat on the stairs of the temple for about an hour and a half. It was close to 7:30. We were in no mood to while our time away and go to a restaurant in the city so we decided to take a parcel from KFC and eat it at our lovely room.

I'm about to go to bed now but oh, I've learnt so much today. I saw the monument that Hyderabad is famous for. I was never a museum person but I guess today, my curiosity and a knack for adventure got the better on of me.

Which is a good thing.