Walk it! Feel it! Heritage Walk 2

I was waiting for a chance to go the heritage walk for a long time .it finally came yesterday. I called up two of my friends and requested them to join me. To my delight they agreed.
I reached Charminar at around 7am and Mudassir and Layak, my friends were already waiting there. We went towards the Heritage Walk stall setup at the base of the Charminar. The security guard pleasantly inquired if we were there for the Heritage Walk. We replied that we were and soon tickets in hand we made our way inside. We waited there for a while till the arrival of our guide at around 7 40. Till then many other tourists gathered and surprisingly there were more foreigners than Indians. Our guide was a polite and good natured lady. After a brief and colourful introduction by her, the walk started.
The first stop was immediately outside the Charminar. The jama masjid was built my Mohd Quli Qutb Shah before the construction of the Mecca Masjid began. Jama Masjid was the first big masjid to be constructed outside the Golconda.We looked only from the outside as the locals refused permission to let us inside. After the explanation by the guide,we walked towards the charkaman. 'kaman' means gateway and 'char' means four. This gateway frames the charminar beautifully when viewed from some distance.The four ways leading outward from the Charminar all have one kaman each.The surroundings have many such kamans apart from the four mentioned above. As we moved on, we came across a crossroad ,the center of which had a fountain named Gulzar Houz.
To the left is the Sehr-e-Batil kaman and to the right is the Kali kaman.From the Gulzar Houz we procedded towards the Patherghatti Market.All of us looked with interest but to the sellers's dismay nobody bought anything.
The moment the patherghatti market ends,the dewan devdi complex starts at the right side of the road.'Dewan' means 'prime minister' and 'devdi' means house.This structure belongs to the Nizam era and not the Qutb Shahi era. Much of it does not exist today,only some small portions can be seen. Further walking brought us to the Dewan Devdi Darwaza ,which thankfully is in fine condition.This was the home to many of the prime ministers of the many nizams.
Also the Salarjung Museam was based here before it shifted to the present location.
The last stop was the Badshahi Ashurkhana,the place of mourning built by Mohd Quli Qutb Shah.This was undoubtly the most beautiful structure in the whole walk.The Ashurkhana lies opposite to another heritage building,the Alladin building.The main Aashurkhana complex is square shaped with four buildings at each side.As we enter, to the right side there is the Nagar khana and to the left the Ashurkhana.The other side has a kitchen and some rooms.The Ashurkhana itself was not as big as i expected. After acquiring the keys from the caretaker and removing our footwear,we went inside.The main wall was breathtaking to say the least.It had enamelled tiles which glistened in the morning sun's rays.We spent a long time looking at the tiles.Sensing our interest right from the start,the guide gave us some more interesting nuggets of information.One such was that in the 1908 floods of musi(yes!! the musi did flood some times in the past)half of the Ashurkhana was submerged damaging the tiles below the waterline.These were later repainted by the nizam but the glory of the qutb shahi tiles could not be regained.After some time, breakfast packs were distributed and then some sizzling irani chai was served.After this, the walk eneded and one by one the tourists left. Soon we found ourselves alone with the guide,with whom we talked for sometime. She soon left as she had another tour to go to. We clicked some more pics and then left.
It was 10am and the breakfast didn't appease mudassir's appetite,so we went to the famous hotel shadab and had some local hyderabadi fares .Layak still didn't want to go so i suggested why not take a look at some more heritage buildings nearby while we were there.He agreed and we then had a look at the Govt City College and the Puranapul. After that we decide to call it a day and went home.

today along with my mj frend mudasir and his bro ,i went to see the chowmahalla palace,had quite a problem finding it as many locals didnt know what it was.later i found out that localli its called khilwat.
here are the pics.
the palace is stunning and worth your time.

today was saturday and i had nothing planned.i was in my aunt's houz when suddenly akku called and suggested a visit to golconda.i was up for it and soon i joined akku,arif and farukh.we made our way through the small alleys surrounding the golconda in an autorickshaw.as it was a weekend we could see a lot of tourists,including a sizeable amount of foreigners.i already had a printout of the map of the fort and we followed it.it took an hour for us to reach the top most point, bala hisar.it offered us some spectacular views of the surroundings. i could spot some other landmarks like tramati baradari,the qutb shahi tombs,the gandipet lake and others fro there.we had sat here for sometime before seeing the rest of the fort.we saw many important buildings like the armory,akanna maddanna's office,the diwan e khas,ibrahim quli qutb shah's mosque,barood khana,the hamam and others.the whole fort is beautiful and on reading the various stories associated with the fort and seeing the very place where it happened one gets transformed back in time.we took 3 hours to fully cover the fort and in the process didnt miss much of it.

It was a long time since we had been to a heritage place so yesterday me n shoaib headed to malakpet for raymond's tomb and asmangadh palace.i read abt these in some
websites and decided to check it out.i located the locations in google maps.we got
down at malakpet and decided to walk from there.after some confused wanderings
we located a signboard of A.P.tourism directing towards raymond's tomb.we took the
smaller bylane branching off from the malakpet dilsukhbagar road,near the tv tower.
from there we followed the google maps directions.soon,while walking, i saw among
the newer buildings, an old yellowish building with a distinct architecture.as soon as i saw it, i deduced it to be the Asmangadh palace.it was built by asman jhavi,who was a prime minister in the nizam's court.though it has been named as a palace,it doesnt look like one.unfortunately, it is located in the campus of st.josephs school.the security guard there didnt allow to take pics.on asking him why it was not allowed,he said that it was the principal's order.i was annoyed,here we r searching for this place among the mazes and clutters of disorganized buildings,only to find ourselves not able to take any pics.well what could we do!.we just strolled around it,took a good view of it,all under the watchful eyes of the security guard,who looked as if it was his own property.the palace itself is nothing much,it's more of a mansion.soon we were out of the school limits and we took some pics from outside.then we headed towards raymond's obelisk,which was much easier to find.it is situated on a small hillock,which offers some good views of hyderabad.it has two structures, one is the obelisk itself,which has the initials JR written on the four sides.the other is a greek style building.both are beautiful.we took some pics and sat there sometime taking in the view.after sometime we left.we noted down the route we took and also marked some landmarks for our future trips.
RAZZAQ