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Hyderabad, a city that is rarely on the tourist trail - and today we discovered why. The main reason we were in Hyderabad was because it was a stopover on the way to our next major destination Aurangabad. Nevertheless, we thought we'd look around.
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A short stop in Hyderabad

K.thambi
2006-01-06 14:28:41

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Hyderabad, a city that is rarely on the tourist trail - and today we discovered why. The main reason we were in Hyderabad was because it was a stopover on the way to our next major destination Aurangabad. Nevertheless, we thought we'd look around.

To our surprise, there was a really cool sounding place called Ramoji Film Studios - a pseudo Universal Studios except based around Bollywood (the Indian film industry). If you've never seen a Bollywood movie, then imagine lots of brightly clad Indians running around the screen singing and dancing to Indian music that has been remixed by wannabe Indian DJs. Many actually are supposedly of a very high standard, but the few that we've seen to date are just plain funny.

Ramoji was visually very impressive. There were numerous beautiful gardens and buildings. Unfortunately that was about it. In total there were only three shows for the day: an opening ceremony that for some reason had dancing chinese people (must be cheap labour), a pretty cool Indian dance show and a wild west show (it was funny to see Indian cowboys). In addition to the shows, we went on a bus tour through the backlot and saw a lot of
buildings that obviously would have meant a lot if we were bollywood fans.

After Ramoji, we went to a massive hill top fort called Golconda fort. This was breathtaking - a huge and spectacular fortress constructed in the late 1500s. The coolest thing here was that the structures were built such that if you made a noise (eg. clapping or stomping) anywhere around the ramparts of the fortress, the echo would be transmitted all around the 7kms of walls. Thus, guards would be alerted to the presence of any intruders.

That night, we hopped on a long-distance train to travel to Aurangabad. This was surprisingly a rather pleasant experience. The seats folded down to make beds and using the provided pillows and bedsheets we were able to comfortably sleep throughout the 14 hour journey. Well, at least I was able to. Melenie had a cow sleeping next to her that kept mooing (okay it was an old lady, but her snoring sounded like a mooing cow). At one time I woke up in the night to find Melenie muttering to herself, singing a song about how she was going to flush the lady down the toilet (the mooer had kept her

In hind sight we think perhaps they were Nepalese. Still what the heck we they doing here anyway.
up for a good part of the night).

I also got into a conversation with a Muslim guy who I am convinced is a terrorist. He kept trying to tell me how the Taliban were good and America was bad, and how Americans and Australians hated Muslims etc. At first I tried not to contradict him in case he stabbed me in the middle of the night, but after 2 hours of his ramblings I got all patriotic and told him how Australia had raised so much money to help muslim nations such as Indonesian during the Tsunami relief. That shut him up.