‘Tombs of Qutb Shahi Kings

Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh)

I got on the wrong train?! This could be horrendous in India given the distances between stops!! Fortunately I’d got on an earlier scheduled train that was running 2hrs late - as was mine. The 2762  instead of the 2438, going in the same direction, and stopping at Hyderabad. Confusion the result of all trains late running today. -it is ‘India National day’. The country is celebrating 60years of it’s own constitution.

Guard with a couple of passengers have managed to find me a bunk so I can stay on this train, mine is two hours behind and a slower train. Fate has it that this is the one I wanted. - but all booked out according to ticket office, so must have a no-shows bunk. First time in posh class ‘three-tier AC’ as it is called, three tiers of bunks make up each compartment in an air conditioned carriage. Normally I travel ‘Sleeper class’ but all booked, so I upgraded. Up there with UK trains, sockets for charging laptops and mobiles. Everyone has their laptop out to watch the latest Bollywood pirate movie as we travel. Five different movies surround me and they all sound and look the same, apart from the sets! Lunch and dinner served to your seat/bunk (although missed lunch in the confusion), each carriage has its own ‘watchman’ so you don’t need to chain your gear to your bunk. Arrived in Hyderabad from Nagpur 750kms after 14hrs.

The city is truly a city of contrast; it has 500-year-old buildings, the second largest mosque in India, able to accommodate more than 10,000 worshippers, and overlooking it are the beautiful old ruins of Golconda. This was the city that preceded Hyderabad; water shortages 500 years ago in Golconda along with the associated diseases forced the then kings to find a more suitable location, so Hyderabad arose alongside the Musi River.

It has some of the most graceful Islamic-built tombs and mausoleums I have ever seen at the ‘Tombs of Qutb Shahi Kings. I spent my wandering around, just admiring the cities contrasting styles, the modern, glass and steel of ‘cyberabad’ to the ‘old city’ with its centre piece ‘Charminar’- another building of Islamic grace & beauty.

I really like the style of the domed tombs and Islamic-style buildings in general, from the Taj Mahal to the small local mosques still built today, Hyderabad’s skyline is punctured with minarets and domes as you scan the horizon from the fort.

It is also in the news for all the wrong reasons - fraud. The founder and CEO of ‘Satyam’, Ramalinga Rajuis, is a Hyderabad local. Satyam was India’s largest IT out-sourcing company working on behalf of all the major IT super corporations, supplier of the infuriating ‘call-centre’ mentality, to Microsoft, Cisco, HP, and Dell - among others. It is reported that 185 of the Fortune 500 companies are customers.

Rajuis has admitted he has been ‘cooking the books’ for years and the auditors had not discovered it; “India’s Enron” is how it is being described!? The IT industry is huge in India, a major factor in the expansion of India’s economy, if not the main part in its success and modernisation.

The contrast is more than just the architecture and history. India is the economic powerhouse’ of South East Asia competing with China on many levels. Hyderabad brings home the immense separation in India between its growing wealth and the heart-rending poverty. Most poignant was watching an innocent act of feeding the pigeons outside Hyderabad’s eateries along Station Road, while two emaciated beggars looked on, one in torn ragged clothes, the other at the feet of the ‘feeder’ asleep on a sack of his worldly belongings!

I spent time wandering the city and exploring the abandoned fort at Golconda along with the Tombs of Qutb Shahi Kings, both fascinating in their ancient elegance, a bit of culture to my travels.