Photography -- Golconda and Qutb Shahi

These are shots from Sunday the 1st of February, when I took a brief excursion by auto-rickshaw to the Golconda Fort (home of the Qutb kings) and the nearby Qutb Shahi tombs (what they built for themselves when not building forts). I should preface these by explaining that "fort" really does not do justice to what we're talking about here. "Fort" to me means something like Fort Duquesne in Pittsburgh, something the size of one or two city blocks with a decent wall around it. "Fort" to these guys means "take a big hill that has big rocks on it, build walls on top of those rocks, put a palace and down around the walls, put another wall around those, and then put a third really big wall even further out". (Apparently, the medieval Deccan Plateau was not a very sociable place.) In its time, Golconda was a full-fledged city. (Still is -- the outermost wall is actually right in the middle of a thriving town.) You would NOT want to be the guy charged with trying to break your way in, especially not after the invention of cannons and other devices for dropping large heavy objects on invaders.

The photoset for the fort and tombs is even bigger than the main Hyderabad set, and is here if you're into wasting some time. These are, in my opinion, the higher points.


First, a view of Golconda from the bottom, before you start climbing:



Your humble narrator, with the fort in the background:


A view from the top of the fort towards the tombs:




A view of the walls, with a woman whose dress I thought really matched the scene nicely:




Back down at the bottom, the upper fort at sunset:


One of many photos of the Qutb Shahi tombs, about a kilometer north of the fort:


There are many other tomb pictures in the photoset, but they all look about the same, so you get one.

As a closing point, there's something you may notice if you looked at the close-ups, and that's trash, in quantities that would make Oscar the Grouch crack a smile. For all their history and beauty, these places are NOT well kept-up. There's garbage, stray dogs, and weeds growing everywhere. Once you get inside, the guards will be very certain you have a ticket, and there's plenty of touts offering to be your guide, but you could scratch your name into something, toss bottles off walls (yes, Golconda has bottle kids), or even set up a cricket pitch right outside some king's tomb (not making this up). It's kind of sad, because it means they're going to decay further. On the bright side, unlike visiting a ruin in the Western world, it means that you have free reign. You can explore anywhere you'd like, violate the "photos only if you paid Rs 20 for a camera permit" rule, and generally roll your own guided tour. It just makes me wonder what these places could be like if someone spent the money and effort to really set up a proper visiting experience.