Weekend @ Hyderabad

On my return from a visit to Pune, made an "on the spur of the moment" detour and decided to visit a friend in Hyderabad. That's how I came about spending a weekend in Hyderabad and enjoying some of the visual and culinary treats the Nizam's city offered.

I had visited Hyderabad about 6 years back on a work related official matter. The city has indeed changed a lot since then. Madhapur and other areas have developed at a very nice pace and overall - pretty impressed with the city infrastructure.

With a weekend at hand, visited some of the places I had not visited before, including Ameerpet.

Was amazed at the mushrooming business of "you name it - we deliver it" sort of training centres and equally thriving businesses of book piracy. Want the latest released book on MySQL high-availability clustering? Well you get it xeroxed and nicely bound in spirals at a rate of around 40 ps per page.


Want training on the latest buzz in the IT space. Be it BigData, Cloud Analytics, Agile .. you can get trained here at a fraction of OEM training costs.


Moving on, who can resist the urge to sample the famous Hyderabadi Biriyani. And we did more than just sample. Had our tummies full with the delicacies that Paradise is famous for.

No visit to Hyderabad can be complete without a mention of its most famous monument. Which else but the grand Charminar. Located in the midst of a bustling street (reminded me of Shaniwar wada in Pune) the Charminar is a structure that has surprisingly still retains its old world charm. 

An ASI maintained monument, thankfully it was less crowded on this particular day, and were able to climb up the structure and experience the feeling within the structure. Climbing the structure from the winding staircase is a bit claustrophobic but on reaching the top one gets a nice view of the city through the pillared passages.

Subsequently visited the nearby  Mecca Masjid as well.

On a whole, it was a nice weekend spent in Hyderabad. Plan to visit a lot more places in the coming year.