Botanical Gardens & Charminar

Botanical Gardens

About 1 mile from where I ma staying is a botanical gardens, called Shri Kotla Bhaskar Reddy Botanical Gardens - nice and short.....It cost 15 rupees to get in and an additional 10 to use a camera - so thats about 50 cents total - not bad value I guess. The gardens were quite large - at one end was a large pond with water lilies and a large greenhouse of sorts that contained lot of tanks with water plants. A path guided you around the gardens. It was well maintained, and there was an army of women sweeping the paths. There were a lot of flowering plants - lots of red, yellow and orange, which seem to be India's favourite colours. It was nice to be away from all the traffic -  it was like an oasis of green. I spent about 1.5 hours walking around and taking photos before heading back home.

In the afternoon I decided to head for the old part of Hyderabad and visit Charminar again - I just love wandering around that place - so much to see. Since I have not yet got another driver to replace Rama, I had to go by auto rickshaw. I asked the driver to use his meter (it's rare that they do). He said it was about 12 km away and they charge 9 rupees per km - reasonable I thought. However, I had not bargained on 2 things - that the driver did not know the way, and that it was a lot longer than 12km! He had to stop several times to ask other rickshaw drivers, and I was trying to show him the way on my iphone. Eventually after about 1 hour and 20km later, he stopped by the Salar Jung museum, which was close enough to Charminar. The museum was closing in 1 hour otherwise I would have gone in.  I gave him 300 rupees and set off walking. I was right next to the Musi River, which looked so polluted. People here just throw rubbish into the streets without a second thought.

Mosque

The walk to Charminar ("four towers") was not for the faint hearted. This is the heart of the muslim part of Hyderabad (controlled by the Nizams for a couple of centuries), and was crowded with shops of every kind, with people everywhere. Traffic choaked the roads and you had to be very  careful. As a westerner (taking photos) I stood out and a lot of people wanted to sell me stuff - just have to say no politely and move on. The kids often wanted me to take their picture and practice their English on me - I was happy to oblige.  Not too many Ganesha's here (him being a Hindu god), but I did see a couple.  I passed a mosque painted bright green - typical of muslim mosques. One of the streets off the main Charminar monument was filled with vegetable sellers - always like to wander around that kind of place.

Charminar at night

 Had a coffee in a place just by the mosque - was nice to have some peace for a while. I wanted to get some photos of the Charminar at night, so went out again at around 6:30 just as it was getting dark.  You always get a lot of attention around here - a lot of it annoying. One guy wanted to sell me some 'Raybans' -started off at 1,500 rupees. I told him I didn't want them, but he followed me until he got down to 250 ($5) - I still didn't want them, but shows how much you can haggle around here - even without trying! I got some good photos then decided to head home. I hailed an auto and he said 300 rupees fixed fee. I agreed and hopped in. Again it took close to 1 hour but at last this guy knew the way! I gave him 350 as it was a tough ride through the busy Sat evening traffic.