Hyderabad Bazaars

Sunday was our only real day of sight-seeing on this trip–we met as a group early in the morning and set out to see the city. Hyderabad is India’s fifth largest city with some seven million people–meaning it’s about the size of L.A. and Chicago combined.
We started the day at the Birla Mandir, a temple to Lord Venkateshwara that overlooks most of the city. We had to take our shoes off to explore the sprawling marble edifice, but there were many people scurrying about brushing off the steps and hand-washing the surfaces so it appeared pretty clean.
Then we went to visit the Buddha statue in the middle of Tank Bund, the lake that connects Hyderabad with its twin city.
In the heart of the Muslim old city, we climbed the 500-year-old Charminar, shopped for a brief while in the bazaars at the base of it (I bought salad tongs for about 80 cents after some tough bargaining), and saw Mecca Masjid, the second-largest mosque in India, which can hold 10,000 people at a time and dates to the early 1600s. Everywhere we went we attracted quite the crowd–there aren’t that many western tourists wandering around here, although our hotel is packed with western businesspeople.
We had a great tour guide, Kumar, for the day, who got repeatedly annoyed by the stragglers in the group and our poor bargaining skills. He finally stepped in when I was bargaining over some trinkets in a bazaar and somehow secured a lower price than I had even started negotiating for.
We saw a lot of kids out today, mostly pretty poor and mostly selling things. Speaking of selling things, one of the biggest snacks here on the street are fresh coconuts, where the sellar hacks the top off and sticks in a straw.
Our second-to-last stop was the Qutub Shahi Tombs, which are the only place in the world where an entire dynasty is buried in one place. About 400 years old, the tombs are in terrible shape now, although structurally they are amazing, giant buildings rising from the countryside.
We finished the day at Golconda Fort, an ancient 12th century bastion that protected the early empire here. After trekking the 1.5 km (and 340 steps) up to the top, we walked down the backside of the fort into the old palace where they’re now doing a light and sound show in the evening. India’s tourism infrastructure is as dilapidated as everything else