Bidar road trip from Hyderabad

Just went for a short day trip to Bidar from Hyderabad on Jan 16, 2010. This post is to document the whole plan and quick tips  Since we travelled with GPS and Google maps have excellent coverage of the area we didn’t face any issues.

The way to Bidar

The route maps on Google here. The total distance came out to be around 115kms from Miyapur. The route is pretty straight forward. Get onto NH9 which goes from Hyderabad to Pune and onward to Mumbai. Drive around 85km and then take a right onto SH4 and drive around 26 km to reach Bidar (which is in Karnataka). The right turn is well marked out and clearly points that it goes to Bidar.

We started around 7:00 a.m from Hyderabad and even though we expected around 2 hours of driving it turned out to be 3 hours as we took a pit-stop in the Haritha Restaurant (APTDC) for breakfast. The restaurant came around 60-65 kms from Hyderabad. The choice of food was limited but the Poori and Idli we had was steaming hot and sumptuous. The bathrooms were clean as well :). The stop is highly recommended.

The road was excellent all the way and traffic was sparse, I could drive easily at 100kmph. Just before reaching Bidar there is a reserve forest and when we were driving through a tiger leapt in front of our car. Ok I was kidding the forest is there and my daughter was trying to see a tiger :)

 

 

In Bidar

We took the following route plan inside Bidar

Just after entering Bidar (A) you’d see an old Fort gate on the right, get into it and you’ve reached the old city. After that you just need continue on the straight road. The un-mistakable clock tower (chaubara) would be infront out you.

 

 

Our first stop was the remains of the ancient theological college (B), Mohamad Gawan Madrasa. Built in 1472 by Gawan, a Persian exile and scholar of the Bahmani court, this was one of the greatest centers of Islamic learning of its time, attracting students from all over. We got some nice shots of the place and the beautiful green parrots hovering around added to the color.

From this we drove another km to the Bidar fort (C), which comes straight ahead. After getting through another set of fort gates we got into the fort.

Do note that the whole idea of fort gates is to make entry difficult and not allow you to see what is ahead, so drive carefully and honk (there is a sign that proclaims horn-mandatory).

Inside the fort we first went to the museum and then asked the folks their to show us around the fort. The fort is kept under lock-key to prevent people from scribbling pappu-loves-pinki on the walls and you need to explicitly ask to be shown around (and tip them at the end). We were shown around the various Mahals, especially the Rangeen Mahal took our breadth away. The museum also has some interesting pieces like locks which are bigger than my door and huge guns which could be carried only by people who anyway didn’t need them.

Just outside the museum is the canteen where we grabbed some food and coffee. The whole area around Bidar cultivates sugarcane, and if you are not explicit about it they’d put all of that in your cup of coffee. Energized with all that sucrose we ventured out to the back of the museum to see the diwan-e-aam and diwan-e-khaas.

After that we drove down to the Barid Shahi tombs (D). It has a nice little park and our daughter enjoyed the welcome break from seeing old buildings and enjoyed the slides and slings.

Our last stop was the Gurudwara Nanak Jhira Saheb (E). Finding the was easy as there is a gate on the SH4 from where you need to get into the road that leads to the Gurudwara. Do remember to carry shawls for women and handkerchief for men to cover the hair which is mandatory to enter the Gurudwara. In case you forget you can always get them at the Gurudwara but putting cloth which hundreds have used before might be a bit yucky :).

We paid Rs10 to get some very tasty halwa which was loaded with Ghee. The Gurudwara had clean pay-n-use loo which helped :) 

 

We asked the Sardarji security guard for some pointers for good food and we pointed to a fantastic restaurant. It’s called Rohit Restaurant and is on the road that leads to the Gurudwara from SH4 and is just beside the police chowki. It’s Punjabi cuisine, vegetarian and is clean and the food proved to be excellent (their naan/daal-fry can hands down beat any 5-star restaurant). Highly recommended.

On the way back we again went back to the Clock tower (choubara) area to pick up some Bidriware which is specialty of this City. These are hand made by putting in silver threads into copper, zinc allow casts. It’s pleasure to actually see them being made and buy from the artisans directly. Do not buy Bidri from the main road as they’d loot you. Ask for choubara and then when you reach that area ask around for the shops.

It was around 3:30 when we finished our Bidar tour and drove back to Hyd.

Tips:

1. Carry a map (print-out from Google) for Bidar city if you do not have GPS
2. Start early so that you can finish the fort before it gets too hot
3. Ask to be shown around inside Bidar fort and tip at the end
4. Carry cloth to cover head if you plan to visit the Gurudwara
5. The Rohit restaurant close to the Gurudwara is highly recommended.
6. Do buy some Bidriware (small pieces comes for around Rs.200). However, you need to go to choubara area to buy them.

If you visit Bidar and want to get something added/updated to this post do leave a comment.

Indic Language Input

If you have tried inputting Indian languages in Windows you know it’s a major pain. That is particularly sad because Windows comes with very good support of Indian languages. I had almost given up using my native language Bengali on a computer due to this. Even when I was creating the About Page for this blog and wanted to have a version in Bengali, I had to cut it short a lot because typing it out was so painful.

There are web-based tools like the Google Transliteration tool that works well for entering text into web-pages where they are integrated (e.g. Orkut). However, I wanted a solution that pans the desktop, so that I can use it for say writing a post using Windows Live Writer.

Enter the Microsoft Indic Language Input tool. Head over to the link and install the desktop version. You can install the various languages individually (currently Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu is supported). I personally installed the Bengali and Hindi versions.

Since I am on Windows 7 which comes pre-installed with Complex language support I needn’t do anything special. However, on older OS like XP you need to do some extra steps which are available through the Getting Started link on that page.

Once you are setup you can keep the Windows Language Bar floating on the desktop. The tool extends the language bar to allow you to enter Indic languages using an English keyboard via transliteration.

Go to the application where you want to enter Indic language and then switch to Bengali (or any of the other 6 supported Indic language) using this language bar. Start typing বেঙ্গলি using English keyboard and the tool will transliterates. The moment you’d hit a word terminator like space it inserts the Bengali word.

I tried some difficult words like কিংকর্তববিমূঢ় and it worked amazingly well

I had a very good experience with the tool. The only issue I faced was that the tool was extremely slow with some WPF apps like Seesmic twitter client. However, I got to know from the dev team that they are aware of the issue (it’s for some specific WPF apps and not WPF in general). I hope they fix it before they RTM (the tool is in Beta).

Tip: You can hit alt+shift to cycle the various languages in the toolbar without having to use your mouse (which is handy if you typing using a mix of languages).

Kismat Konnection

<sorry for the total off-topic />

I had a real hard time giving a title to this post.

The post was originally supposed to be about the fire I saw yesterday in a movie theatre Talkie Town (map). However it is not really about the fire, it is more about the people and how they reacted to it.

First things first, the fire.

Folks who know me, know that I go to a movie theatre once in couple of years, I prefer movies visiting me rather than the other way around. In the 4 years I'm in Hyderabad, this was my 3rd visit to a movie. So I can say it was a momentous occasion when me and my wife impromptu decided to see a movie in the 2 screen theatre in Miyapur called Talkie Town. The decision was heavily biased on the fact that my father-in-law was at home looking after our daughter.

Batman  (or rather The Dark Knight) lost to my wife and I was forced to see this bollywood flick Kismat Konnection.

This is where all the fun started. Just after the interval (1.5 hours through, and yes bollywood movies are that long) people saw some light on the theatre ceiling. Soon the light spread and there was a small hole in the ceiling and we could actually see flames. Whatever was above the sound proofed ceiling had caught fire and the heat actually caused the material of the ceiling to burn.

Then the most amazing thing happened, 50% people didn't care. They were gleefully looking up and not even caring to leave the theatre. I'm not talking about some false fire alarm, or smell of smoke, it was a real fire with flames and a burned hole in the ceiling!! The fire alarm didn't sound and no one from the theatre authority seemed to be around. I left and called some folks and they simply went to the terrace. All the noise now prompted some more people to leave but even at that time there were others happily watching as if the whole thing was a part of the movie.

Then even more amazing thing happened, the folks from the theatre came and said that the fire has been doused and re-started the show. The hall was smoky and the AC was off. Me and another guy (yea there were some more sane people around) caught hold of an official and he simply said he has checked and he can guarantee that everything is safe. I asked him that since he couldn't ensure that there is no fire in the first place how can he guarantee against a recurrence, he simply said I can get a refund of my ticket. Which I did and left the hall.

On the way back I had a revelation. From childhood I had seen that people around me had little care about safety in general, but this is the first time I figured out that people didn't even care about their own safety. How can a movie be worth taking the risk of sitting in a fire hazard zone and that too with small children on their lap is something I will never figure out.

A lot of things including the traffic situation and the weird jay walking I see around suddenly makes more sense to me.

International Mother Language Day is back and being celebrated with a lunar eclipse

For starters it doesn't include C++ or C#, even though your mom codes in it :) ...

A lot of people speaking English natively forget the importance of mother language due to its predominance. They take their language for granted. However, each year a bunch of languages become extinct, the latest being Eyak, which got extinct exactly a month ago with the death of Marie Smith Jones the last native Eyak speaking person.

To me this day (21st Feb) is even more special because on this day in 1952 people in Bangladesh laid down their lives while demanding the right to use their own (and mine) mother language, Bangla.

I believe that if we don't actively try to preserve our mother language they will slowly become extinct. One of the most important things to preserve a language is to ensure that they are better covered by technology. Until XP complex script handling was not enabled by default. This resulted in Bangla and other Indic language to be rendered completely wrong on XP. This was a serious deterrent to use Bangla on Windows. I used to have Bangla signature in my email and got countless replies indicating the spelling is wrong. I always replied back to them about how to turn the complex script handling on. Things are changing rapidly, Vista has this on by default and with better keyboard and font support I'm sure using Bangla on Computers will become really easy.

Choose your company name well

 

Sometime back Hutch phone in India got bought over by the international phone giant vodafone. They re-branded Hutch in India to Vodafone.

Now when I call up home and the phone is busy I get a recorded message in Bengali which means "The Vodafone number you're trying to call is busy". All that is good but the problem is that vodafone in Bengali exactly means foolish phone. So I just hang up and wait for the foolish-phone to get free.

Ravenous Bugblatter beast on Indian roads

From the HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

"The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal is a creature that hails from the planet of Traal, and will eat anything. If you are to encounter one, the Guide tells you that it's impossible to slay, so you should wrap a towel around your head. This creature is so mind-bogglingly stupid that it assumes that if you can't see it, then it can't see you."

I felt like one while on a road-trip to Visakhapatnam and surely you'll feel like one on Indian roads. We were going at high speed and suddenly we see someone crossing the highway. We honked hard and the person simply looked down. So the idea is that, if he can't see you, then you don't exist. Or maybe they were using the SEP field technology.

In the following video watch the first person crossing the road and next a cyclist goes in the wrong direction as we wiz past at 120kmph (75 miles/hour).