Five days in Hyderabad

We managed to experience a interesting mix of activities and attractions in Hyderabad. I don't think that it's one of the more touristed of Indian cities, and it had a good feel to it.

One of the reasons we stayed five days was that we needed to book ourselves a flight up to the north of India, which we did online from an Internet cafe in Hyderabad. We booked a flight with Air Deccan, one of the many Indian budget airlines. They were so much cheaper than Indian Airlines that there wasn't a decision to be made.

Finding a hotel when we arrived off the train proved to be interesting. We arrived at the station in the morning, having got a 16 hour overnight train from Bijapur. We were in second class sleeper, and it wasn't too bad: slightly more basic than the sleepers we'd taken in China, but generally OK.

On leaving the station we were immediately hounded by a hotel tout, who took some persuading to get rid of, but we eventually managed. However, after that we struggled a bit to find a hotel; two places we went into initially said that they had rooms, but then changed their minds when we inquired further. I don't know if it's because we'd annoyed the tout. We did find a place in the end. We had to pay a bit extra for the more expensive room on the inner courtyard, because we didn't fancy the really nosiy room overlooking the main road junction outside the station. Having said that, we managed to get a bloke in the room next door who'd put his TV on full volume at 6am, and the staff weren't particularly quiet either.

One day we did a trip to Golconda fort, which is a little bit out from the centre of the city.

We tried to get a bus there, because the auto-rickshaws were asking stupid money, but we came up against the usual thing: everyone we asked would tell us a different bus number, and as a result we couldn't trust anyone. In the end we got an auto-rickshaw for what seemed like an OK price. The fort was quite impressive, although we hadn't been to Rajasthan yet, where the forts were more impressive still.

Another day we did a trip out to Ramoji Film City, which is a film-based theme park outside Hyderabad. I'd hoped that we'd get some kitsched-up Bollywood stuff (is that possible?) but in the end the dance show we went to see consisted of a small group of people who couldn't dance! There are lots of film sets that you can walk around, and a range of shows to go to, plus overpriced food to be bought.

It was quite an interesting day because we were on holiday with the Indians; we didn't see any other westerners there, just the Indian middle class on a day out. Loads of people wanted to have their photos taken with us!

One evening there was a big book fayre in one of the parks, and we went along because we needed a Lonely Planet guide for Bangladesh, where we were going next. We'd looked in the bookshops, and they'd directed us to this place. We thought that it was a bit of a long shot, but we found a copy on a stand representing a Delhi bookseller.

We also took the opportunity to get printed the photos which we'd taken of some of the locals in Badami, and went to the post office to post them off. The Indian post office was a new experience for us, complete with the separate pot of glue for glueing the stamps on, and the man who franks your stamps in front of your eyes, to ensure that no-one peels them off your letter to use on their own!

There was a great restaurant across the road from our hotel; we must have eaten there about five times in as many days.

The waiters there were friendly, and seemed to have a fetish for giving us spoons to eat our meal with; on one visit we got about eight to find uses for! We also discovered a nice coffee and cake place, which we visited on a couple of occasions; this was a weakness of ours in a lot of cities we visited!