A Family Trip To Hyderabad

[rahul4640]

Friends,
Made a tour of Hyderabad with family. Though I have visited Hyderabad previously, wife and daughter have not been there. Hence they were easily persuaded to make a tour.
Started from my home in Calcutta at one O'clock in the morning. The highway was almost empty, possibly due to the cold winter climate.

Stopped at Uluberia, at Azad Hind Dhaba for tea. The time was two O'clock in the morning.

Empty Roads.

Sunrise on the highway.

I am sure that all travelers on this road will recognise this bridge at Cuttack town. This line I guess goes towards Paradeep port.

Roads after Bhubaneswar is very much inviting. You can easily go for triple digit speeds.

And this is the last picture just before we entered Vizag and called it a day. The time was quarter to three in the afternoon then. Checked into a hotel and took rest. Left again the next day for Hyderabad.

Thanks for reading. I shall continue with details of my trip very soon.
Regards,
Rahul Biswas,
Cossipore, North Calcutta.

 

[ABandy]

Excellent pictures and nice write up. Waiting for the remaining part.

 

[msingh]

That's really great, its amazing to drive on such empty roads.

 

[rahul4640]

Hello friends,
The next day was spent on the road. Though my hotel at Vizag was good at every respect, they could not supply us even a cup of tea before eight in the morning, hence our journey was slightly delayed. The traffic was initially dense, as expected. But it eased up after travelling 20-25 KMs.

The road was very scenic, with small hills visible from the road.

I think these Volvo buses do not let tou to pass from right, hence you have to overtake them from the left.

Cigarette brake, at the roadside. My daughter is on my right at the right side of the picture,

Breakfast brake.

Tea time at the immediate vicinity of the above restaurant.They also serve chocolate-shakes for only fifty rupees, which my daughter said was quite good, in spite of being not at all expensive.

River Godavari after Rajahmundri town.

Lord Hanumanjee standing proudly at one bank of the river.

Inside Vijaywada town.

Leaving Vijaywada.

Vijaywada was connected to Hyderabad by a beautiful highway.

This picture was taken at around five at the afternoon. Hyderabad was 214 KM from there, where we reached at our hotel at a place called Abids, at around half past eight.

Thanks for reading. I shall continue soon.
Rahul Biswas

 

[ABandy]

Wow. Excellent trip, nice pictures and beautiful write up. Enjoying a lot. Waiting for remaining part.

 

[Nairrk]

Indeed nice pictures.

I too have noticed that many hotels do not serve morning tea before 7 in the morning (some even at 8 am). To overcome this issue we have now started carrying a small electric kettle. Sugar and Tea pack so that we can make our own black tea any time we wish in order not to delay the early morning drives.

 

[GrandRk]

Excellent trip on the way along with narration. How was the traffic inside Vijaywada? Did you took IRR to bypass Vijaywada town?
Yes, most of the hotels don't serve tea earlier. Many times we had skipped complimentary breakfast as well on our transit stay.

 

[RKKOLLIPARA]

Leaving Vijaywada.
View attachment 254860

This Chittinagar tunnel started functioning when I am schooling at Vijayawada.

Our school conducted trip to this Tunnel, it was 8th wonder to us in those days.

 

[rahul4640]

Gentlemen and friends,
On our first day, at the insistence of my daughter, we visited Ramoji Film City. It was located on a very large area. Took us quite some time to visit it. But they did not allow our camera inside, hence had to leave it at the gate, at a locker after paying forty rupees. This Ramoji Film City was
situated at least 25-30 KM away from my hotel.The road leading to that place was very beautiful too.

This is the main entrance, where admission tickets are available. The admission charges were Rs 1425/- for each of us, IIRC.

Some pictures of the inside of the film complex, taken by my daughter with her mobile phone.

The technical aspect of movie making is also briefly explained to the visitors here with these devices, complete with both video and sound editing.

It was already afternoon when we returned back to our hotel. At the evening we went to visit Necklace Road. It was really a very enjoyable drive. We circled it twice very slowly, before settling down to one of many restaurants there, for our dinner. One picture of the lake. Please excuse me for the poor picture quality. It was taken from our moving car.

It was the first day of our Hyderabad tour. Thanks for watching this.
Regards,
Rahul Biswas

 

[sukanta1973]

Dear Rahul da,
Kindly share the timing for Vizag to Hyderabad.

 

[rahul4640]

Dear Rahul da, Kindly share the timing for Vizag to Hyderabad.

About 10-11 Hours, with adequate stops, assuming your speed to be between moderate and cruising. But you already know that it also depends on the nature of the car and the driver.

Friends,
The next day after morning breakfast we went to visit Golkonda fort. Here I must mention that we fully depended on Google map for direction and it did not let us down. But this time it directed it towards an one way street. Unable to enter, we went past it and soon came across a better road (it seemed), going past some defense buildings and an awesome view of the fort. The fort was large and seemed majestic from the bottom.

The view was even great from the paid car parking.

An inside view of the fort.

The way to the top.

View from the top.

This is while coming down.

Immediately thereafter we proceeded towards Charminar area. My hotel had already told me that Charminar area was totally a vehicle free zone, hence had to park at a distance, as suggested by them, at a safe place called MJM parking area.

Few pictures of the Charminar.

View from the top.

After visiting Charminar and having tasted the famous Hyderabadi Biriyani in a nearby restaurant, I felt tired. It was the consequence of climbing Golkonda fort and the Charminar. I took back my car to my hotel in Abids. My daughter and wife explored the famous Ladbazar market nearby, as they wished to have some marketing and returned after 2-3 hours (in an auto). I have found that most of the main tourist attractions in Hyderabad are located within an area of 5-7 KMs (except Golkonda fort and Ramojee film city), hence auto rickshaws are very helpful there.

Thanks for reading,
Regards,
Rahul Biswas

 

[rahul4640]

Gentlemen & friends,
On the last day of our stay at Hyderabad we visited one museum and two palaces. We were glad to find out that all of them had adequate room for car parking. I think the largest museum at Hyderabad is the Salar Jung museum and I visited it first. The collection was truly huge, so was the building.

.

On the entrance stood this vintage Merryweather firefighting truck. I have tried to highlight the logo on the bonnet with an arrow. Hope that all other petrolheads of this forum will also like the truck.

This is the main entrance hall.

Few pictures taken inside the museum.

The craftsmanship on ivory was worth seeing.

Painting on ivory.

The veiled Rebecca.

This museum has a very exclusive collection of clocks, located in a separate wing. Two pictures.

It took over three hours to just had a casual glimpse of the objects on display. In my opinion more than a day is required to carefully visit all the items put on display. There was a good eatery located behind the building, where our car was parked. Had a good vegetarian lunch before we proceeded towards "Chowmahalla Palace" and the "Purani Haveli". I shall tell you abut them in my next post.
Thanks for watching,
Regards,
Rahul Biswas

 

[thiagar]

Great write up. I am tempted to start planing for my Chennai <-> Hyderabad trip right away. Thank you for all the details.

 

[ABandy]

Great pictures indeed and excellent write up.

 

[bhvm]

Great pics. The Ivory work is outstanding. Very large. One can imagine the beauty & size of animal that flaunted these tusks.