Golconda Fort

So last Sunday we made up our minds to go to the Golconda Fort, after all what did you do in Hyderabad if you didn't check the Fort and Charminaar (this I still have to do). So we decided to check out the Fort, or rather what's left of it, because it evidently is not the Archeological Survey of India's most favoured historical monument. It was beautiful, at some places you felt like shutting your eyes and imagining what the Fort must have been like when the King was there, all the hustle and bustle, some of the places had wonderful acoustics (in one of the halls if you whispered in the corner, the person standing at the diagonally opposite corner could hear as if you were standing next to him), it was apparently riddled with tunnels, secret passage ways and the sheer size made you gawk. Well, some other things would make you gawk too, and that's why Golkonda/Golconda Fort finds itself in Litterrati!

I took the following pictures as our party went up, to the very top (through the Aam Raasta, that was the way taken by the commoners if they wished to present themselves in the King's court) and came down by the Khaas Raasta (which means the Special Way, which was taken by the nobles).

It fell in ruins after the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb's conquest in the 17th century (which is the reason why one of the seven Qutub Shahi tombs is empty, the last ruling king didn't get a chance to get laid to rest in the tomb built for him!)

arms and ammution, cannon balls!

one of the ancient water tanks..

A masjid in the Fort. I forget the name!

and a temple...

This chap was sitting way at the top... I wonder why he doesn't value his life...

A hand clap here, just inside the Bala Hissar Gate, the main entrance to the Fort, reverberates and can be heard at the highest point of the Fort, around a kilometer away, another example of the wonderful acoustics. 

For more information on the Golconda, the capital Fortress City of the Qutub Shahi Emperors, do a google!

Skies over Griffitth park

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shhh!

...we are preparing for the Commonwealth Games! This might include taking out filth from sewage canals (you can't help it, its blocked!) and spewing it out on the road. Now that can't be helped because the road run's parallel to the open sewage canal.

See you in 2010!

Skies over Griffith Park

Nothing to do with litter, and not because Los Angeles is such a clean city. I took these photos on 1/21, just before sunset. 

a cute one...

This is a really nice picture of a young girl off to school. She lives on the other side and takes the boat to get to the school side. She'll tie her boat there. When she returns in the afternoon, she'll row herself home.

on the other side...

The other side of Gagri Bal is littered with shops of all sorts. Nothing special about these shops really, they have stuff you'll find all over Srinagar, just that if you feel like shopping while on a shikara, well you know where to stop, atleast you shikara man does!

The day we were to leave, we took out a little time for a shikara experience, for which we hadn't had time till then. We decided to spend 45 minutes on it. The shikara guy, instead of taking us out to main Dal Lake part, took us to these shops area, we weren't interested in shopping and asked him to steer away, maybe upset that he won't be getting any commission, he started rowing back to where we had started, when Dad pointed out it had been only 25 minutes, he actually came to a stand still, and didn't move till time was up! Fortunately Dad was in a good mood, and laughed at his cheek, because Dad has real bad temper.





Hmm... This looks like a general store of sorts.


This chap is actually trying to wash something in the water. Dunno what was dirtier by the time he finished, the thing he was washing, or the thing in which he was washing.


Even BPL is making its presence felt!


Some shops are not on land but are houseboats.




The people who live on the other side grow vegetables and flowers and then sell them on the Lake, and also row them across to the main part. Apart from that there are other shikara shops, selling different things.




This guy here is selling jewellery trinkets and curios.


And this one is offering to take our pictures in traditional clothes. You'll find such photographers in all of the famous Mughal Gardens.


The CRPF water wing. Kashmir is crawling with the army, the police and the like. Spotting bunkers, or army cars, or machine guns in NO BIG DEAL.

the underwater jungle...

OK. Now for the real thing. If those pictures were like a trip to heaven, these will jolt you back to earth, the real purpose of this website. It was pretty shocking for us as well. What after all that we had heard of Kashmir, the paradise on earth.

A native friend told us that weeds were choking the Dal Lake (but nothing could have prepared me for this). That the authorities were trying to get rid of them but they grew too fast for the huge machines the government had set up along the lake's border (pictures in some later post). Well, everybody knows when its man against nature, nature wins. And it surely doesnt help if the man happens to be only too willing to let nature win.

I got to know that the Dal Lake really was very beautiful. But then terrorism struck Kashmir, and like most things during those dark ages, it fell into decadence. Though terrorism no longer has Kashmir in a chokehold, the government could never restore its glory, whether its the Dal Lake or Kashmir in general.

These pictures just present the pathetic weed situation in the Lake, the Gagri Bal part, and the litter thrown in by the tourists who clearly have no desire to leave the place as they found it. They leave it only a little dirtier. Thousands of tourists, all contributing only a little. The impact can be imagined. Sadly, the locals don't mind, they help.

If you look a little carefully at this picture you might notice weeds just below the water surface. The sad part is that this is true just for the picture, when you are out there you really don't have to make an effort, its staring you in the face.

I actually felt a little scared in the shikara, it appeared there was a jungle down there, and if I fell into the water, it would gobble me up only too easily.

This actually looks like dry land, but its not. The only way of detecting water would be probably to throw a stone and see it splashing.

I wont call this filthy, or dirty, or anything such thing. To me it was just plain shocking.