Hyderabad Diary - Day 3

We had to check out of our hotel on Day 3 and normal checkout timings are around 12 noon. This is where Zoomcar again helped us a lot since we could keep our luggage in the car safely and yet enjoy the remainder of our trip.

After checkout, we first went to Salarjung museum; after reaching there by around 11:45, we decided to directly go to the lobby of the legendary cukkoo clock kept in the museum and witness the 12 'gongs' for the 12 'o clock time. Then we took a quick tour of the ground floor of the museum but I soon realized that a lot here was similar to the Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum of Pune so we decided to skip the upper floors. From here, we went back into the city to visit the Birla Temple.

We found the car parking at the Birla Science museum and walked to the temple only to find the temple doors closed till 2 PM. So we decided to go for a short window shopping in the narrow streets around the temple. The scenic panoramic view of the Hyderabad city, including the majestic Hussain Sagar lake, offered from the roofs of the temple was amazing and the marble floor was soothing cool for our bare feet in the searing afternoon heat.

From here, we decided to go to Sudha Cars Museum. We had the famous 'Hyderabadi Biryani' at a restaurant just around the museum and then entered inside the Cars museum. This is an attraction that holds a place in the Limca Book of Records too. There are working models of cars of such crazy shapes and sizes that are literally unimaginable - from camera and pencil shapes to cricket bat and ball. About 1 hr is pretty sufficient and it is time well worth spending I believe.

It was nearly 5 PM and from here, we decided to get to our Final Destination of Hyderabad - the Golconda Fort. We sat on the sprawling lawns of the Golconda fort premises and enjoyed the cool evening breeze while also having some snacks. At about 6:30, it was time for the Sound-n-light show of the Golconda, which is still dubbed in Mr. Bachchan's voice. Seems there are very few people who know about the light-n-sound show or are interested enough to stay back. At about 7 PM, we left the Golconda fort and within 1 hour, we had reached the Airport, including about 10 mins' time for submitting our Zoomcar back at the station. So for the 10 PM flight, we had reached the Airport by around 8 PM and so we made it in good time.

It was a great trip and I believe we had planned it really well to be able to visit nearly all the famous Hyderabad tourist attractions and yet not make the trip hectic - we did not wake up from our sleep before 8 AM even once during our trip!!! 

Hyderabad Diary - Day 2

We had planned for Day 2 to be for Ramoji Film City. We had actually planned to leave hotel by around 8 AM so as to reach the venue by 9 AM. However, we woke up late so we ended up reaching the venue by around 10:30 AM. But thank God I had booked the Ramoji tickets online in advance which helped to avoid the large queues of the weekend. Note that there are just too many attractions at Ramoji to be able to finish all of them in 1 day. And then we reached there late so we were bound to skip a few of them.

We started with the Dadajinn's section that has children's play area included, along with a 10-15 mins entertainment show at a small theater starring Dadajinn himself. Thereafter, we enjoyed the 'Spirit of Ramoji' entertainment show which included some Jugglery acts, a magic show and some song and dance sequences. Then, we boarded the Ramoji film city tour bus that took us to various places for a guided tour. This included visit to the Bahubali sets which was simply awesome. One can imagine how the sets were used alongside the special effects to make the film look that grand. We had our lunch here and then proceeded to visit the sets of a new version of Mahabharata tv series that was recently shot there. There was also the set that was used for shooting of Chennai Express.

Following that, we reached the Jaipur Palace replica. After that, the tourists are supposed to go to a bus stop to board the next bus that takes them to the Bird Park and Butterfly park. But the Wild West show, which is a live stunt show including actors zipling across the arena and firing bullets (not the real ones though, but the sound effects are nothing short of real) was also a must-watch so we walked all the way back to the main avenue, watched the Wild West show, then went to the Space Amusement park. Now this is something that we can always skip since we didn't find it entertaining enough. Even the movie making workshop wasn't worth the time so we skipped that.

Then we walked all the way back to the bus stop but by then, the last bus had left. So again, we asked for directions and started to walk towards the Bird Park (the Assistants there informed us that the parks were just about 1km away). But luckily, we were picked up by a bus coming from some other direction but going towards the Bird park. Bird Park is a MUST VISIT place if you go to Ramoji. There is a huge variety of birds, some of which are kept in cages (expectedly) but there is another section where the birds are flying around freely and you could almost touch them. Its a treat to watch so many birds of different species and colours. We were exhilarated to be in the Bird Park and felt that our efforts to walk all that distance paid off in the end.

Then there are the Rock Garden and the Bonsai Garden too but we were already out of time and we had to board the last bus of the evening to get back to the main avenue so had to skip these. Since we were lucky enough to go to Ramoji around the New Year's time, our day's quota of entertainment wasn't just over yet. We had another dance and light show at the center stage, followed by a Ramoji parade which has lots of lights and dance shows. After this, we walked a few paces to the Mysore Garden replica to enjoy the lighting before getting back to the Car Parking zone. We left Ramoji at around 9 PM and reached the hotel by around 10 PM. What a memorable day we had here!!

Some pictures:

Hyderabad Diary - Day 1

Finally I got around to writing my travellogue for my Hyderabad trip with my wife. We took trip from 5th to 7th Jan but wasn't able to find time to write until today. Since this was a 3 day trip and we visited a lot of places, I'll write this travellogue like a diary.

Before the trip started:
There are few preparations we made which proved to be an important part of this trip. I had been to Hyderabad in 2005 during my Engineering. So I knew which are the most popular tourist spots. So this time, I wanted to experiment something: rather than booking a cab for 3 days, I decided to give Zoomcar a try this time. The reviews of the service weren't very great. But I decided to try it out myself once. When I registered, I had to upload a soft copy of my driving license. As opposed to some reviews, my license was approved within ~5 mins of my uploading of the soft copy. So the local travel arrangement was done. Flights were booked in advance for the return journey. In order to afford maximum possible time, we booked Pune-Hyderabad flight for Friday 6 AM and Hyderabad to Pune flight for Sunday 10 PM. So we had almost 3 full days to cover different spots in Hyderabad. However, while planning, we found out that a lot of tourist attractions of Hyderabad are closed on Fridays so we had plan accordingly.

Day 1:
We boarded the 5 AM flight from Pune to Hyderabad and reached Hyderabad by about 7 AM. We were supposed to be picked up at the airport by a Zoomcar executive to take us to the nearest Zoomcar station which is just outside the Hyderabad airport boundary (by around 7:30). There, we filled the checklist, verified the car condition, captured a video to note if there are any existing scratches / dents. The car was in a good condition and was washed neat and clean but the inside was a bit littered so we asked the executive and he got the car cleaned there. We left by around 8. We planned to start our trip with Chilkur Balaji temple on the Western side of the Nehru Outer Ring Road. The temple decently maintained and is reminiscent of the olden days since it doesn't have any modern attractions / decorations on the temple. In fact, we actually struggled to find the actual temple until we had almost reached there since it looks almost like some old Factory. We visited the temple and had planned to possibly spot some Flamingoes at the Gandipet lake which is just beside the temple premises. However, the place wasn't very accessible and we couldn't spot any birds there. Then we had our breakfast - masala dosa with tea - in the temple premises itself. Next we proceeded to Harina Vanasthali park. But again we were disappointed since we were informed there that the park safari goes for the rounds only if there are min 20 ppl, else we can walk around but we didn't because we didn't want to tire ourselves out. So next we went to Taramati Baradari to reach there by around noon. This actual site which is of historical importance was not so well maintained, but the gardens surrounding it seemed good. However, we didn't find it much interesting so we left from there. Then we proceeded to our Hotel Imperial Classic which is situated at around 5 kms from the Hussain Sagar lake. You can read my review of the hotel on the TripAdvisor website. We had our lunch and then decided to take a little rest.

At around 5 PM, we reached Hussain Sagar lake boating point, which is close to Lumbini park. We enjoyed the evening stroll in the Lumbini Park. Then we took a boat ride to reach the Buddha statue at the center of the lake, spent some time there, taking selfies and then came back. From there, we went to the famous Charminar. Here, we navigated across the various shops selling variety of products including the famous Pearl jewellery. Then we got back to the hotel by around 9 PM, had our dinner at a nearby restaurant and then went to sleep.

Posting a few pictures here below.

Dosa at Chilkur Balaji

Taramati Baradari

Lumbini Park

The Buddha statue on an island on Hussain Sagar lake

Charminar

Charminar