Hyderabad still offers a taste of history, architecture & biryani

"Oh, you can check out the Central Mall and then the City Centre Mall. There are at least 50 malls in Hyderabad, mind you," said a friend
excitedly who has been living in the city since a couple of years. Probably she forgot that we were in the city of nizams from Delhi — which has its own share of malls — and that we were there to get a taste of the real flavour of Hyderabad’s history, architecture and biryani!

So after having the staple idly-sambhar breakfast at a nearby joint, we thought of checking out the Hussain Sagar Lake that was not very far from where we were staying. A sizable part of Hyderabad is as if weaved around this lake, which also bridges the culturally different Hyderabad and Secundarabad.

The piece de resistance of Hussain Sagar is the 18-m high Gautam Buddha monolith that stands in the middle of the lake. Birla Temple, not very far from the lake and a must-see in our itinerary, would surely excite travellers from the north. The main deity in the temple is Lord Venkatesh and the beauty of the premise, as is the case with all Birla temples, spreads beyond the main mandap to the lawns and the lanes.

Keeping ourselves hydrated with regular watermelon slices and nariyal pani, we headed for the Paradise. What’s that? It’s one of the most popular food joints and the Biryani from this place is highly recommended. And with salan and raita, it’s a complete meal. Your stomach may be giving you the warning signals but yeh dil maange more—is how you feel after having those delicious biryanis. The take-away section alone is as big as any decent restaurant at other places.

Then we thought of checking out the hi-tech city of Hyderabad. Realising very soon that we were not there to count the number of stories in those similar-looking buildings, we made a cut to Ista for lunch, a hillock-cut hotel in the hi-tech city itself. I was already feeling deprived of one of my basic rights — shopping. And so our next stop was the pearl market — another main attraction of the city. One can find the pearls from as low as 50 bucks to as high as a few grands — to be sure of whether it’s the real one is another thing!


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