Chowmahalla Palace

Hotel hassles

I told the hotel to hold the idli for breakfast this morning and just give me the thosai; otherwise, it would be too much.

After breakfast, I sorted out my stay for tomorrow night when I had a booking made through trip.com for the purpose of a late check-out.  The hotel told me that they wouldn’t honour it despite trip.com having confirmed (with the intermediary) that it would be.

When I explained that I wouldn’t stay the full night but only till 1930, he lowered the rate a bit, making it coincidentally the same as what I had paid through trip.com

I quickly cancelled my online booking and paid directly.  I later complained to trip.com who gave me a bit of a goodwill gesture.

It is rare nowadays to have hotel hassles via good booking platforms.

Chowmahalla Palace

I took a rickshaw to Chowmahalla Palace which was closed yesterday.  Walking into the complex, it was stunningly beautiful in the gardens and the first part of the palace complex which held the throne room.

The palace was the seat of Hyderabad’s last dynasty which ended in 1948 following annexation by India.

Moving on to the rear part of the complex, it was a different story.  The buildings were run down but the gardens were perhaps similarly tidy.  The Nizam’s collection of cars was in one of the buildings at the rear.

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Back in the front section was a collection of beautifully handwritten Qurans which had been restored.

A photo collection of the last Nizam and his family was also the same building.  He had a very European face, since the dynasty has a mixed heritage of Persian, Central Asian and North Indian (Aryan). The dynasty used the Persian language and later Urdu.  He looked very different from his Dravidian subjects, who spoke Telugu.

It felt like colonialism, but it isn’t quite, because he was definitely a local to the land with no other mother country and did not siphon the wealth generated to an offshore.

Nizam’s Museum

My final sight for my stay in Hyderabad was the Nizam’s Museum located at another palace, the Purani Haveli.

This palace wasn’t so well kept and one of the wings opposite the museum still operates as a school.

Inside the small museum were many beautiful exhibits but photography wasn’t permitted without a special fee, and I didn’t have the right change.  The exhibits that stood out were pewter models of various buildings in the region and a throne.

The world’s largest wardrobe is house in this museum.  Built from Burma Teak, it spans 176 ft running most of the length of the wing of the palace.  It has two stories and is equipped with a wooden hand-cranked elevator.

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Rest of the day

From the museum, I wanted to go to Paradise, a chain restaurant that came highly recommended for the Hyderabadi biryani.

A rickshaw driver happily took me there but kept wanting me to stop a jam shop because Hyderabad was famous for jams.  He said that the shop would reward him with a tank of gas but I put my foot down and said no, as I was hungry.  I later realised he meant gems!

Regardless, we had to make a stop for gas, literally gas as in CNY and for safety reasons I had to hop out from the rickshaw during the refilling.

The biryani at Paradise was nice but nothing that special.  What grabbed me more was the ingenuity at ripping me off for a bottle of water.  Bottled water was shown on the menu as “MRP” which is usually INR18.  But they cleverly produce their own house brand which proudly carried an MRP of INR60, tricking people like who wanted cheap rehydration.

After lunch, I explored the movie and entertainment complex next door, enjoyed a cone from McDonald’s before walking back to the hotel.

I tried hard, at several various pharmacies and a hospital, but in vain to get some medication which I normally get easily in India.

With the end of my stay in India approaching, I topped up some cash from an ATM only to find that it charged a fee without disclosing it (whereas some do).  I finished the day with a vegetable curry and some very thin (rather than fluffy) naan bread.