Being guests of the Nizam

A trip to Hyderabad was in the offing and it did happen last weekend. The occasion was a wedding of one of our colleagues’ and we didn’t have any inkling to work on Friday. As we had to board an evening train, we started filing out of workspace by lunch. Though the journey consumed around 14 hours, it was enjoyable as we were 11 in the group trying to extract fun to the fullest. The wedding was to be on Sunday and we had the whole of Saturday to wander the streets of a beautiful city. I, very much liked the city and would rate it better than Chennai (though would not prefer to leave Chennai). The only dark spot in the otherwise pleasant visit was the loss of my friend’s wallet worth 2500/-.

Since we could not club a tour with this particular wedding, as we had done for the previous ones, we tried to do the routine stuff that the local tourists do. First was a visit to a “Lumbini Park” and there was nothing much to do there except gaze at the speed boats cruising along the lake and trampoline. We could not venture into either of these because the waiting time for boating was more than 2 hours and trampoline was restricted to people weighing less than 60 Kgs. Then came a distracted entertainment in the form of Cricket – Score 50 from 18 deliveries and bat for another 12 extra deliveries bowled by a machine. 3 of us did try our luck and we were able to score around 40. Having spent an hour trying what else to do having come here, we took few snaps and left for a bowling alley. None amongst us could boast of prior experience and yours truly was very much delighted to had ended with highest score (113) and thereby winning the championship (@#$?!)

The next day, we reached the wedding hall well in advance (as a matter of fact, first to reach even before the bride or the groom). The groom was rhapsodic and why wouldn’t he be, for he had been waiting for this day since his graduation...J. The rituals were in contrast as to what I had witnessed in the weddings in the past and it was over in few hours. We duly completed our formalities of wishing the newly weds and devouring some gorgeous food down the way. We had very little time before our return journey could start so we decided to do some shopping. One particular ad captivated us, a 4-D movie – “Haunted house” was being screened which runs for around 15 minutes. Wow! Man, it surely rocked. It was a 3-D movie with the addition of trying to create a reality by involving us in the adventure. It surely worked in their favour and we were thrilled to have experienced that. We felt it was apt to start so that we could pack our things and be on time for our return journey. Though we didn’t sightsee any place in particular it was a different experience altogether compared to the previous ones.