For more photos check out my wife's Instagram highlights story reel whatever thing on Hyderabad.
I have numerous posts on Hyderabad, based on my trip from December 2023. Most of the posts were written during and shortly after the trip. Other than this main post, they include:
Check those out. Also, since those post in very long, here's a table of contents:
Introduction
Stuff to Do
Weekend Getaways
Films Set in Hyderabad
Movie Theaters
Introduction
“The city of Hyderabad seems to have been dropped to the earth from an Oriental dream. It is the most Eastern city in this most Eastern land, and you are filled with a sense that it is not at all real, but especially staged and set for your amusement, and when you leave, it will all disappear… [it is] all a part of the pantomime, or a mirage caused by the brilliant sunshine of this Southland.” - Elizabeth Cooper
Fact check: Mostly true.
I spent five weeks in Hyderabad in December 2023-January 2024 and loved it. It was different from my expectations, in some ways underwhelming but in other ways pleasantly surprising. I felt very at home here, would have gladly stayed longer, and hope to return. I cried when I left.
Should you go? I wouldn’t rank it among the top places in India to visit as a tourist who only has a few days, but it’s certainly solidly mid-tier. It has more to explore than any of the other big South Indian cities, and it is great for longer stays for people who like to delve into places. There’s of course a rich history, but as far as modern India goes it is pretty nice, and there’s surprisingly a lot of natural beauty. There are several sides to the city and it thus has a lot to offer, given its Nizam and Qutb Shahi era histories as well as its status as the Telugu capital and as a modern cosmopolitan tech city. It is also the home of Rajamouli, which makes it something of a pilgrimage spot for cinephiles, myself included. My favorite places to live are ones that have rich heritage alongside the pleasures, comforts, and amenities of modernity, and Hyderabad has one of the better combinations of that in India.
I’ll start with some of what underwhelmed me. When it comes to its heritage, Hyderabad is very much a “you’ll get out of it what you put into it” city. If you just go and see the iconic sites, you will have a good time but probably won’t be blown away, though I loved a number of sites. I’d say there are a lot of very good sites that benefit from engaging with the history, which makes it good for a longer trip, but it doesn’t have any of India’s top things to see, nor would I say the city itself is a great attraction the way Mumbai or Kolkata are. The city of the Nizams may have been the richest and grandest of all of the princely states (said to be wealthier than all of the others put together), but I wouldn’t have guessed that from visiting, and it didn’t impress me as much as I expected. Compared to Rajasthan, it lacks the same calibre of big ticket attractions as well as the low key charms, being too big, chaotic, and modern to be transporting. I came here shortly after my stay in Ahmedabad and was actually surprised at how many categories where I’d rank Ahmedabad higher, including in its Islamic architecture.
Compared to other historical cities known for their heritage, the charms of Hyderabad are further beneath the surface. Faded grandeur describes many of India’s cities, but in Hyderabad the opulence and splendor feel even more long lost, with a large portion of it already bulldozed away. This includes the sorts of minor, quirky sites that add a lot of charm to cities. The rock house of Banjara Hills, I believe the first house in the neighborhood, is gone forever. MF Husain’s Cinema Ghar is gone. Most of the old palaces are gone. Chowmahalla Palace, which is the main palace of the Nizams that tourists visit, was once 45 acres but is now only 12 acres. Osmania hospital, one of the city’s top five buildings, is on the chopping block [edit: since I wrote this it’s apparently been saved…for now]. Beyond any specific site, it just seems that the old city area is more poorly preserved than the historic areas of other major cities.
It’s hard not to lament the poor state of much of the city’s heritage, but I admit my expectations were too high. I was expecting something akin to a Muslim Jaipur, or an Indian Istanbul. I think, given the city’s historical status, those expectations were reasonable, but they were very wrong. While Royal Rajasthan remains a tourist attraction, Royal Hyderabad is relegated to the history books.
Things might be different if the Nizam agreed to join independent India and the Indian army didn’t have to take it by force, and if more of Hyderabad’s elites stayed in the city rather than going to Pakistan and elsewhere. Things surely would have been different if the last Nizam stuck around, like other Maharajas, to keep the legacy alive, rather than going abroad and leaving the city’s heritage without a caretaker figurehead.
As for what survived today, the taste of the Nizams is kind of boring, in my opinion. A lot of the architecture is European inspired and is more blandly regal than awe-inspiring. That may have been enchanting at one point, like a weird royal mirage in the middle of this rocky desert landscape, but as the mostly ugly modern city builds up around it, it doesn’t have the zany style that many other princely states have to make it stand out.
Nonetheless, there are several great places to visit and the continuity with the past lives on, if you look for it. More than the Charminar, more than the museums in the old palaces you can visit, the old world of Hyderabad came alive while visiting to the 100+ year old Zinda Tilismath unani medicine factory (I went on a heritage walk with Deccan Archives, probably not open to the public), going to the 170+ year old Munshi Naan stall, dining at the home of the excellent homechef Dilnaz Baig who preserves the unique Hyderabadi cuisine that’s a world away from what the restaurants serve, listening to the Thursday night Qawwali at Dargah Yousufain, etc (and reading a lot of books). There is still a lot of great architecture, but for me the city stands out in experiences like these that give it its character. The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Some of my favorite experiences in the city came when I was searching for some historical sites that nobody really visits. The old, long-gone Hyderabad was full of mansions, and they have mostly been destroyed, or they sit eroding away while the modern city develops around them. I went hunting some of them down (Errum Manzil, semi-visible from the metro station, and the Hill Fort Palace), walking down random alleyways to try to get some decent photos. I enjoyed the search, despite limited success at getting a good view of them.
When I went trying to get some shots of the King Kothi palace, where the last Nizam resided, one of the Nizam’s descendents saw us and was excited that we took an interest in it. He gave us a tour of part of the property that wasn’t locked up, telling us stories from the Nizam’s time, pointing out the windows of rooms where important family members lived. He showed us old photos of what the building used to look like, including a photo of Nehru standing in the same spot as us. He asked us if we’d been to Falaknuma Palace, which is the best restored Nizam era palace (run by the Taj, and very expensive to stay at or even visit for a meal), and when we said we hadn’t he told us he would get us a free stay there for a few nights. We were leaving two days later, but he told us to call him the next time we come to town. Could he really hook us up at the most expensive hotel in the city? I have no idea, but that he offered seems like a charmingly Hyderabad thing to happen.
A similar experience happened when I went to check out what I believe is the city’s oldest cinema still standing, the Yakut Mahal Deluxe Theatre, where the Nizam would see movies, and where there used to be a separate section for men and women. I was just going to take photos and buy a ticket to take a look inside, but the owner enthusiastically gave us a tour, showed us the projection booth and the 100 year old film projector that was imported from Chicago (and which he said was still in use until 2022!), offered us chai and snacks, and wouldn’t let me pay for anything. (More on this in the movie theater section later on.)
I read in some old articles and essays that Hyderabad has a more laid back and hospitable culture than other big cities in India, and when I read it I didn’t believe it was true any more, and that it’s probably just like any other megacity now. Maybe that’s mostly the case, but those experiences (both in my final days in the city) and a few others made me feel that yes, there really is something special about Hyderabad’s hospitality. I’m not saying anyone should walk in my footsteps and do what I did to find it, I’m just saying if you hang around long enough, go exploring, and show curiosity and enthusiasm, you too will be able to experience it! (I suppose that is the overarching theme of this entire blog, and my broad view of life in general.)
As a place to live, Hyderabad is in the upper tier in India. It’s not as happening as Mumbai, Delhi, or Bangalore (for me “happening” basically refers to the food scene, not sure what it means to other people), but it’s more liveable than the first two and with more character than the latter. More happening than Chennai or Ahmedabad, maybe tied with Kolkata. If you stay in the right areas it can be pretty nice. I liked Jubilee Hills a lot, it is among the nicer fancy neighborhoods in India.
I had a ton of fun in modern Hyderabad. I saw nine movies while I was there, six of them at Prasads, perhaps my favorite movie theater in India (do not underestimate how much this raises my opinion of the city). I had a lot of good food. I had fresh, raw camel milk at a Somali restaurant. My wife and I often go to work from cafes, and surprisingly Hyderabad is better for that than anywhere else in India, with many good quality, spacious cafes in nice environments. There’s even an excellent bean to bar chocolate factory/cafe, Manam, which I went to I believe four times. There is, for whatever reason, a commitment to lavish and often gaudy aesthetics in houses, cafes, restaurants, and high end stores, moreso than anywhere else in India. There’s even a fish shaped building, as well as what is apparently the world’s largest stainless steel structure, like that weird mirrored bean thing in Chicago but five times the size.
The winter weather was great. The pollution, though certainly bad, wasn’t as bad as most cities. The traffic was terrible but not unusually so. The metro was good but I only used it a handful of times, from where I was staying it didn’t make much sense to use it most of the time, unfortunately. Compared to other big Indian cities, two negatives are that I found it less walkable and harder to get Ubers.
What really surprised me is how beautiful the landscape is. Nobody told me how awesome the rocks are. You totally forget about this in much of the city, but when you go in and around Golconda you feel the grandeur of the Deccan, and you also get that feeling driving on the highways in various parts, especially around Jubilee Hills. Development in recent decades has encroached greatly on the rocky terrain, to the point where you don’t notice it amidst the modern city built on top of it. But then the rocks jump out at you and leave you in awe. Before coming to Hyderabad, the obvious symbol of the city in my head was the Charminar, but now it is the rocks that loom largest. The comparison people like to make is that the rocks are older than the Himalayas, and they are apparently billions of years old. They may not last another billion years, but I hope for as long as they are around, they can bring people joy as they did for me. I would actually say Hyderabad has the most natural beauty of any major Indian city today, which I don’t think I’ve heard anyone ever suggest (I previously thought it was Bangalore, the greenest of India’s cities, but I find the rocks more alluring than the greenery!). I didn’t get a chance to do one, but the “Society to Save Rocks” has monthly rock walks around the city, usually on the outskirts of it.
Hyderabad is, of course, the Telugu capital. Wikipedia tells me Telugu is the 14th most spoken language in the world with 96 million speakers (the most spoken Dravidian language, which surprised me), it was the fastest growing language in the U.S. for much of the 2010s, and “56% of all Indian student visas issued by the US in 2023 are from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana,” and it’s reasonable to expect the vast majority of those students are Telugu speakers. So, being the Telugu capital seems significant.
That’s not to say it’s a Telugu city. I can’t find what percentage of the city speaks Telugu, but Hyderabad is definitely diverse and cosmopolitan, and the history and sightseeing are geared around the Nizams and Qutb Shahis, so its Telugu-ness isn’t necessarily what stands out. I don’t feel I got any immersion into Telugu culture after spending over a month here. Still, the Andhra restaurants, the squiggly Telugu script on all the buildings, the Telugu names, the distinctive facial characteristics of some people (I only noticed it in bearded men), and the strong presence of the Telugu film industry let me know I’m somewhere distinctive. I also wonder if the over-the-top aesthetics present throughout the city is very Telugu, or if it's inherited from the Nizams, or is some fusion of the two. I like to think Hyderabad holds some fusion of the Telugu and Dakhni cultures, rather than just having them exist in parallel, but I’m not sure if it actually does.
I spent a lot of time reading and learning about the history of Hyderabad, which gave me a stronger connection to the city. It’s not necessary to do so to have a good time there, but it would add to your experience. Of course this is true everywhere, but I found this truer of Hyderabad than most places, which is full of wonderful and bizarre stories that bring the city to life. To help people connect with the city, I thought I’d write up some of the interesting historical tidbits I came across that go beyond the basic history but are hopefully accessible even to those who don’t know much of the history. I originally placed this here, but it is so long I decided to give it its own post. Check it out, if you’re interested.
Stuff To Do
