Golconda Fort was enough for one day for us but the Elders had three more places on their docket. India Gardens was the last where we could ride in an open train and observe the beauty. I couldn't imagine walking it by the end of the day. We had already walked a mile from the Tank Bund just to get to it. I was taking pictures out the side and this young Muslim lady kept smiling at me so I asked if I could take her picture. She seemed to nod but her boyfriend/husband (the fact that her face isn't covered indicates she is married but maybe he gave her permission to undrape) wasn't the least bit happy about it. Muslim women are much more friendly than the men but usually only when the men aren't around. Glad I got away with it. There were more interesting sites here but I didn't seem to get them pictured.
This Buddha statue is on a man-made island out in the Tank Bund Lake where Ganesh elephant idols are dunked, people commit suicide (Dad saw one such pulled out the other day.), and putrid aromas overwhelm passersby. I don't know why the Buddha is there because very few Indians are Buddhists.
We're on a kind of ferry boat headed out to the statue. We think lots of people go out there because there weren't any empty seats on our boat and they were making a mad dash for seats. The woman below wouldn't let me go through the ticket gate until I took her picture. She was all teeth when I showed it to her on my camera.
The second place we went to were tombs where famous people are buried. The cloth above is draped over the coffin inside the tomb to the right but we forget who it is--someone like the original Chief Minister of Hyderabad. There were about 12 or 15 all together, one for each person. When you're important in India, you're really important. For a stark contrast, I took a picture of the woman sweeping because we see women like this quite frequently, sweeping along the side of the roads and even the flyovers, stooped over with their little whisk brooms--such an insurmountable job with a ridiculously little tool. Sometimes they are on our lane early Sunday morning and they will always stop their work to beg from us. They probably make next to nothing.
2 comments:
That tree-jungle-gym picture reminds me of Disneyland. These are some really neat pictures. So is the majority religion Muslim? I assumed they were Buddhists.
India is 80% Hindu, which means they worship idols and no particular god. Buddhists probably, though I didn't look it up, are no higher than Christians which are about 3%. Muslims are about 12-14%. That adds to 100 but there are other religions such as Sikh, Brahman, etc., so the figures aren't exact and are rounded. Hyderabad was founded by Muslims so there is quite a large population here but Hinduism dominates everything unless you go to a Muslim area which Golconda Fort and Charminar are both in. We can hear Muslim prayers over some microphone system around 5 in the evening and morning and that dominates for about five to ten minutes.
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