Hyderabad street life

Hyderabad is a bustling old city in the southern interior of India that is predominately Muslim. We decided to stay a few nights at this hotel before heading to Alleppy and I got in some film clips of street life from our second floor room. Not only is this a busy, noisy area, but crossing to the other side was sometimes perilous. Our room was comfortable, clean and quiet however. Ken and I finally found a restaurant to have a beer; located off the major boulevard, we climbed upstairs to a dark and smoky eating establishment. There were no women, but plenty of men drinking, smoking and carrying on. We had a wonderful shrimp dish with our Kingfishers. We found India to be very conservative in the interior and I have to admit, more interesting because we saw a side that the normal tourist wouldn't care to explore. We were virtually the only Westerners on some of our days of travel. People were wonderfully polite to us, and I found the Muslim people very intense with wicked, sharp humor. There were the fantastic tombs of the Qutb Shahi Kings - immense towering sculptures, bell shapes monuments and not only one, but the site was peppered with a least a dozen of these mausoleums. We also visited the Gaolconda Fort that wasn't as superb as Daulatabad fort in Aurangabad. I love the forts in India; works of art that carry this old age empire of the Mughal sensibility.