A trip to Kohinoor "The historical Golconda Fort"

This weekend i got a chance to show my presence in Hyderabad. I joined Manu to reach Fubu's home. Some of my friends (Divyalok, Vivek Ranjan, Ravi Bhushan and Saugata) started for the same from Bangalore and after reaching Hyderabad we all decided to visit Golconda fort during heavy cold rain. But we have the modern incarnation of Manu's boat at our disposal. They call it Qualis.
We first started for the 7 tombs built by Quli Qutub Shah. These tombs are great piece of Indo-Persian architecture. While myself and Divya were enjoying the splendor of the tombs the other party was busy in hearing the cheap jokes on Indian epics by our religious Manu. After devouring the beauty of the tombs we started for our main destination "The Golconda Fort".
Before going into the trip details lets give the honour to the fort by giving few minutes to its history.
This fort was built by Kakatiya empire of Deccan in 13^th Century AD. After that it came under Bahmani sultanate and then to independent Golconda kingdom (under QutubShahi Dynasty). This kingdom was responsible for the birth of “Kuchipudi” dance. This Kingdom was also famous for its Diamond mines (World famous Kohinoor was obtained from its mines).It had its golden period under Qutub Shahi dynasty (1518-1687). The city of Hyderabad was founded in 1589 by this dynasty and the name Hyderabad is based on the Hindu queen of this dynasty. This queen "Bhagmati" after converting to Islam took the name "Hyder". Aurangzeb conquered the fort in 1687 AD by a very costly campaign that took a siege of almost 8 months and in the end he had to use treachery to win the fort. Now the famous fort shows its presence in rubbles and wreckage. I think it’s the only fort to have Hindu Temples and Muslim Mosque both.

We enjoyed every bit of our visit in the fort. Puneet Issar was shooting for a Hindi Film (Highway) in the premises and we had great fun about it. The sound of a clap in certain tombs can be heard up to a huge distance and this shows the maturity of our engineering some 400 years back. We stayed in the fort till 8:00 PM to attend the sound and light show (in the voice of Amitabh Bacchan) about the history of Golconda. The show was truly worth attending and despite of prompting by fellow friends we enjoyed every bit of it.

We consummated the trip by devouring the famous Hyderabadi cuisine. Overall it was a great tryst with the history of Deccan as well as with the old friends. Vivek captured all those memorable moments by his camera and they can be accessed here. Enjoy the rut till we meet again.