Meeting with The Uncle Sam - Part 2

This is the continuation of my journey in the United states - Part1. In this part I describe about my experience in visiting Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Grand Canyon. We had planned to take few days off to explore these places after our official schedule. During the planning phase, we had explored lot of options and decided to go ahead with the plan as I describe below. However this was not the best or optimized plan. But this was the best we could do in the stipulated time we had.

To save travel time first we decided to fly to LA from SF. Also we wanted to fly such that we could optimize time for covering most of the places. Hence after finishing our work schedule on Friday, we had booked early morning flight on Saturday to reach Los Angeles. We got Vergin America tickets for to and fro at $100. We went ahead and got our seats reserved. We had our flight at 5.50AM in morning which would land us in LA at 7.15AM. We had planned to visit Universal Studios on that day. So we had planned such that we could reach the venue by 9.30 and get maximum time to explore at the Universal Studios. We had booked our stay at Mariott near airport so that we could save time in reaching hotel after we land in LA. The hotel provides free airport pick up and drop 24hours a day. All this we got at INR 10,500 in Expedia.com. But one thing I should tell you - it was very tough for us to get up at 3AM and reach airport to catch the flight. But unfortunately we could not plan better. However, once we reached hotel, we were informed that there were no rooms that were available at that time. The check in time at the hotel was 3PM. So, we quickly had the breakfast which we had got - all thanks to MTR 3 minutes poha. Though I had to take the pain of opening my baggage for security checking at the airport for carrying them, MTR came in handy throughout the trip whenever we needed them. Then we left our luggage at the cloak room and proceeded to Universal Studios. We had got our tickets online so that we could avoid the queue for tickets. The tickets costed $105 per person. We took Uber to reach there which costed us $23. We reached the destination at 9.15AM. We had rough idea about what all rides to go for.  Since we were so early, it was not much crowded at that time. So, as soon as we entered, we decided to first finish the Harry potter ride which was unique to this place. The waiting time was 20minutes at that time itself though we thought we were early. However we decided to wait and finish the ride. This decision proved us right when we saw the waiting time increased to 45 minutes in no time. It was a thrilling experience to having gone through this ride. Later we proceeded to explore The Mummy ride which was the fastest roller coaster ride in the dark. Then we explored Transformers ride and Jurassic park ride. Since we were a bit early, the waiting time was around 10 minutes for each ride. It was a real adventure experience to go through these rides. I really enjoyed all the rides. In the Jurassic park ride, the model dinosaurs keep splashing water :D So one should be careful if they are carrying items like digicams and mobiles during the ride. Overall it is a nice experience. The last fall of this ride is awesome. Do not miss any of these rides. I personally did not like Transformers ride. Rest all I enjoyed. By 12PM we had finished all the main rides. Then we decided to go for a show Animal Actors that was conducted there. The speciality of this show are, the animals are trained here which do the actions as directed by the trainers there.

After the show got over, we went on to have lunch. We took some pizza and donut. Later we explored Death by Walk. Actually this should be scary. Due to the number of people at that time, it was not much scary. We finished exploring almost all of it by 3.30PM. By now we were all exhausted. The reason being we had got up at 3AM to explore all these. Then we decided to head back to hotel. We again booked Uber which costed us $47 this time to reach hotel. We could witness lavish villas of the Los Angeles in the way to hotel. We realized that we had our hotel booking far from city area. However this served the purpose we had booked it for. It helped us save time. 

For rest of our trip, we had booked package trip from TakeTours. It was a 3-day package trip from Los Angeles. It included transport to Las Vegas and 2nights stay at Las Vegas with an option to either spend a day at Las Vegas or explore Grand Canyon. We chose to visit Grand Canyon with an extra cost of $90 per person. We had got this package with Buy2 get 1 free offer which had costed us $230 for the package. However additional $90 extra per head we paid to go for Grand Canyon west rim. We had our pick up at China Town in LA. Again, our hotel reminded that we stayed very far from city area. We had arrived at the location by 6.45AM and our pick up was at 7AM. The uber driver who dropped us there was confused about we getting down there because it was a lonely place and he had no clue why we got down there. After we got down even we were a bit worried. We could not contact the tour operator by phone. So absolutely we had no means to contact anyone there for help. We could not figure out which was our tour bus. After 10 minutes many other people started coming to the same location. Some of them even asked us about the tour bus. Then we got a bit confident that we are waiting at the right location. Then at sharp 7AM bus arrived. I enquired the operator there. She confirmed that thats the bus we were supposed to travel. We got our contact details updated with each other so that for next 2 days we could contact tour operator without any hassles. The operator was Ctours. It was a chinese tour company and the crew members were also chinese. Also lot of chinese take these package tours from LA. After picking few more people bus started towards Las Vegas. Since we were the only English speaking team in the bus, the guide kept on speaking in Chinese for rest of the people on the bus. However after complaining she said her colleague would convey everything to us in English. But we said, that was not working out as we missed out lot of information. The bus stopped at some point where in people can buy some food to have on the way. Later we reached Vegas by 1PM. Initially they took us to some Chinese restaurant for lunch. Also they advertised some of their products. I felt that it was too much of marketing tricks they were playing to support their own people. I personally felt they could have stopped for lunch at some neutral venue where people can find some popular eateries like SubWay and McD. Later we were dropped at the Dragon hotel and we were told that we could take the Vegas tour for additional $35 per person. We thought we would go with them that night and explore Vegas on our own on second day. We were picked up by 4.30PM. The tour covered the Venetian, Belaggio, The Mirage and few casino. Finally we were dropped at the hotel by 9.30PM. We had dinner with MTR we had got. 

Venetian

Casino

The Mirage

Belaggio

Belagio

Next day we had chosen to visit Grand Canyon west rim. Our pick up was again at 5AM. So, continuously for third day we had to get up early in morning. We had packed poha for breakfast on the way. We slept for some time and by 7.30 I woke up and had breakfast. The sunrise was beautiful a t that time. By about 8AM we were dropped at the west rim entrance and had got around 4hours to explore there. This part is managed by the tribals and they operate their own buses to take us around the points in West rim. We first entered Eagle point and the view was breathtaking. When I was in India I was planning to visit Gandikota which is known as Grand Canyon of India. But I was really happy to visit the actual Grand Canyon before visiting its counter part in India. It was so calm over there and the weather was so nice which enhanced our experience. We took Hot Chocolate to drink. Then I went on to explore the famous Sky walk at a cost of $21. It was a nice experience to witness the depth of the canyon through the transparent skywalk. The photos are not allowed there. However one can take it at a cost of $30 per photo. So I decided not to go for photos instead print the view in my mind. Later we got onto the next bus to go to Guana point. I do not have words to describe the view of this natural beauty. Let my photos describe them for you.

After this, we felt our effort of getting up early is worth it completely. Later on the way we visited Hoover dam and the famous Nevada state sign. After this again we were taken to the same restaurant which they had taken us the previous day. But this time, the lunch was already included in the package. The food was ok ok with options to eat noodles, cakes and fruits. 

Hoover Dam

We were dropped to hotel by 3PM with an option to explore Vegas on our own again. We rested for some time and went to the street to explore. We walked across so many casinos and lot of other stuffs over there. We visited the M&M store and also visited Hersheys chocolate world. We had our dinner at taco bell. Finally we got so tired and decided to head back to hotel by 10.30PM. Our next day pick up was at 8.30AM to LA. On the way they again took us to the same restaurant for breakfast. Then they took us to some chocolate factory. Later on the way they stopped at some mall where in lot of popular brand stores were available. We did window shopping and later we were dropped at China town at 5.30PM. We had our hotel booked at Inglewood. We took cab from China town to reach. The journey took around 1hour to reach. Hotel name was the Adventurers. This hotel was so crappy. It was like some dungen. It was very dirty and the people over there looked very scary. Actually it was more or less like a back packers hostel. The rooms were stinking badly. We realized our mistake in not doing home work in picking up right spot to stay. The surroundings were also very scary. Our cab drivers had cautioned us not to step out after 7PM as it could be dangerous there. Hence we had dinner with our MTR again. The only reason my friend had booked this hotel was this was available at $90 per night. But it was a very bad choice. Next day we had plans to visit the Hollywood boulevard. We checked out of the room and put our luggages in the locker that was available there. The locker was also not working properly there. Finally with some efforts we could open it and keep our luggages in. We walked through the Hollywood Walk of Fame and took lot of photos there. Also we went to take photo with Hollywood in background. It was so far that the cameras could not capture them very clearly. Later we took photos near Chinese Theatre and Dolby Theatre. We had booked Madam Tussades tickets online. We entered the studio and took photos with many celebrity's statues there. By 12.30PM we had finished exploring the street. We were so hungry and went on to have lunch at the CPK. There was a lunch combo available at that time. I had taken a veggie pizza with tomato soup. The soup was so tasty, that was the best tomato basil soup I had ever tasted. Then we thought we would visit the beach in LA. We took Uber to Venice beach. We enjoyed the blue pacific ocean for some time and headed back to hotel by 5PM. We had to catch our flight to SF which was scheduled at 8.50PM. The hotel provided free drop to airport which was around 15minutes drive from there. We were waiting at the airport from 6PM. For our bad luck, our flight got delayed by 1.5 hours. Finally the flight took off by 10.30PM and we landed by 12.15. 

Finally our excursion of California and Nevada came to an end with loads of memories. Though the visit was short, I hope the memories would stay for long. I enjoyed the places I visited. However I felt we could have planned better. At some point of time we felt, instead of travelling all the way till Grand Canyon, we could have visited some other beautiful places like Lake Tahoe, Yosemite national park, Big Sur etc. However this is not the end. We witnessed some of the best places of California and Nevada with options to explore further in next visits :)

Few tips:

• Be very careful when you chose a locality in LA. LA is very vast and the traffic is too much in LA. Avoid downtown area, Inglewood. Stay somewhere near Venice beach for better experience.
• As I had said in previous post, car rentals are the best option to explore in US. So, get to know the rule properly and take car rental to explore at your convenience.
• There are lot of eateries in LA. So, if you have car rental it is easy to explore these. 
• In vegas also play casino and know when to stop to avoid losses.
• Do not forget camera to Grand Canyon. Also if you have time, go for helicopter ride. It would be an awesome experience.
• Stay safe during night at Vegas.
• Plan well in advance to get flight tickets at discounted price.
• Carry snacks with you

Meeting with The Uncle Sam - Part 1

This is the blog where in I write about my first visit to the US. Well, as many of my friends and colleagues, I was also expecting a visit to the US on official trip. That was my long pending dream - not because I was desperate to visit US, but to know about the lifestyle there which is attracting lot of people across the world. After I changed my job to Cisco, I got an opportunity to visit San Francisco for a week and I felt happy for it. I got to know that couple of my colleagues will also join me during this visit. We planned our visit together and planned to take the Emirates flight to SFO.

We started our journey on 20th October so that we could land in SFO on Friday and take rest over weekend before going to office on Monday. I was a bit concerned about sitting for 16 long hours from Dubai to San francisco. But Emirates gave the best flight experience I had ever witnessed. The flight was a bit less occupied and hence we could sleep nicely in the flight and did not feel much of jet lag inspite of experiencing time travel :) Yes, I was happy to witness time travel. . We landed in SFO and waited in the immigration queue for half an hour before proceeding to Hilton Hotel, Union Square where we had our booking. We called up the Limo from airport pod setup and reached our hotel. We were surprised to see a huge queue for check in at the hotel. Finally we could enter our rooms at 4PM. Since we did not feel tired during the journey, we got freshened up and found an Indian restaurant near by to have dinner. We stepped out by 7.30PM. It was chilly that day and we thought it will be worse during our visit in the coming weeks. We ordered roti and dal for dinner. But that roti was so huge and thick that we could hardly finish one. After that we went on to some grocery store to buy some fruits and other stuffs which can come in handy when needed. Then we proceeded to starbucks for coffee. We enjoyed coffee and reached hotel and called parents to inform about we reaching the destination. Our first day at San Francisco ended and we had sound sleep.

My friend had told that her friend and previous colleague would come and pick us up on Day2 to San Jose. So we all got ready and finished our breakfast quickly and had some more snacks at the store that was present at the hotel. The hotel did not offer complimentary breakfast. We had to make arrangements for the same. We got ready by 10AM and were waiting for his arrival. Initially I was feeling a bit uncomfortable on going with an unknown person. But by the end of the day Ravi proved me wrong by his hospitality. We were picked up by 11AM and Ravi asked us about our breakfast. We told the food we had (bread and jam). So first he took us to Tirupati Bhimas, an Indian pure vegetarian restaurant in San Jose. Before visiting the hotel we visited Cisco head office at San Jose and finished photo session and proceeded to hotel. We all had good food and filled our stomach properly which would enable us to spend time and energy on shopping for next few hours at the Great Mall. He dropped us at the Great Mall and told that he would pick us again once we are done. We spent around 3-4 hours exploring there and got few stuffs as well :) The winter wear collections were too good to resist and we got few of them and gave Ravi a call by 5PM. He picked us up and took us to CostCo where in we got some chocolates and other stuffs. Later he took us to his home and quickly cooked food for us. The Rasam he prepared was very tasty. I had proper batting (read it as heavy food). By now, we had so much conversation with Ravi and I felt like I knew him from many days. After that we had nice ice creams as well. He is such a down to earth person and made us feel very comfortable right from the beginning. His hospitality did not end here. He even got a big chocolate box for each one of us and gave it to us before sending us off. Finally at 10.30PM we started to head back to San Francisco with loads of luggage. Thanks to Uber which was available to drop us to hotel. Our hotel area was such that there were lot of homeless people around the hotel streets. Our uber cab driver also alerted that the area is not safe to roam around. So from then onwards we were extra careful while roaming around the streets.

Cisco main office

Main office Cisco 

Since it was my first time in the US, I did not venture driving there. Hence on Day3 we had planned to take the Big Bus tour in San Francisco to visit most of the famous tourist spots. The BigBus tour is open bus tour which operates every half an hour throughout the day from 9AM till 5PM. It covers around 21 stops covering most of the famous spots. The bus offers live guide about the places and they also provide ear phones to listen to the commentary using the audio equipment present at each seat. We can take any number of loops throughout the day to go around all these 21 spots. So initially we decided to simply take a loop without getting down so that we could get to know all the stop overs briefly and in the second loop cover only those places which we liked. We started our journey at 9.30AM near our hotel and first we reached the Civic center which is the replica of Washington white house at a smaller scale. 

Civic Center

Later the bus went on to SF Jazz centre, Alamo Square, Golden gate park etc. After all these it reached the famous SF Golden Gate Bridge. With this my long time dream of visiting the Golden gate bridge got fulfilled. Unfortunately, I could not visit this at night and hope for better luck next time :)

SF Golden gate bridge

Later the bus took us to the Pier39. On the way we went along the China town. The bus stops at Pier39 which is the last point of the loop. We got down there and had some food before we took our second round of the loop. In this loop we visited Golden Gate park and Palace of Fine Arts. We wanted to experience the Crooked street and the famous Cable car. So, after visiting the Palace of Fine Arts, we got down at the Union Square North and walked down to the Cable car starting point. It was an amazing experience to go through the ups and downs of San Francisco roads on cable car. It costs 7$ from one point to reach another point in cable car. But its really a not to miss experience. We went to crooked street in this. Here are glimpse of them.

Palace of Fine arts 

Lake inside the palace of fine arts

Another view of the lake

Lombard Street

Lombard street view

The famous cablecar

We ended the day with lots of memories and had food outside in one of the restaurants there and headed to hotel. From next day our office journey begun. Everyday after office hours, we visited few places. One day we went to Pier39 and from there walked to Ghiradelli to taste famous Ghiradelli icecream. With this one of the must do check list in SF got completed. Pier39 is known for Sea Lions and lot of Sea food. So if you are visiting Pier39, go with empty stomach so that you can explore lot of food options there and saviour the Ghiradelli. Another day, we visited California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. Next day we visited Walmart and the other day we took caltrain to go to SanJose and Sunnyvale to meet some friends. Every time when we were taking Uber to reach hotel back, all the drivers warned us not to roam around the streets near our hotel as it is not safe. To add to this on one night we witnessed some homeless guy trying to overpower some woman and tried to steal her bag. But somehow she fought for some time during which the cops turned up. This made us very clear that we should not be taking much chances near our hotel. After this we did not get much time to explore in SF. We had to vacate our rooms in SF to continue our journey to Los angeles and other places - I will cover them in Part 2 of this series. 

Overall I felt the lifestyle in SF is easy provided one has a job to satisfy his necessities as the cost of living is very high. On contrast I could witness hell lot of homeless people who looked scary. Lot of people depend on Cars for transport. Few people use public transport and very less people use the motor cycle. The ones who use motor cycle are the ones who ride high end race bikes. One thing I appreciate there is the driving discipline. People follow lanes and traffic signals seriously. Hence it is relatively safe there to drive. However I had witnessed few crashes on road here and there, mainly because people did drunk and drive. So I felt, unless people really realize their responsibilities properly, there will be hiccups and problems everywhere. 

Few tips to visit San Francisco

• Always have your passports with you
• For exploring SF, one can bank on BigBus tour which is a great experience. It costed $46 for us as Hilton gave 10% discount.
• Carry a good camera with you, you would not be disappointed.
• Do experience the Cable car. You can purchase the tickets at the starting and ending points with cards. However inside the car as well you can purchase tickets by paying the amount to the crew member.
• Stay safe
• Car rentals are widely and easily available in SF. If you have valid Indian driving license, on B1 in California you can drive for a month. However do this only if you are clearly aware of the local rules and regulations. Otherwise for any mistake, the penalty is too heavy there and it may lead to further legal complications as well. Hence get to know all the rules before getting into it. Once you clearly understand the rules, it is very easy to drive there.
• One can easily manage with credit/debit cards there. 

Diary of the Spicy,Pearl City - Hyderabad

This is the blog which talks about the surprise trip that was planned by my wife for my birthday. As usual this was one of the to-do places in our bucket list. We were able to get a day off from work to make it a leisurely trip exploring the pearl city - Hyderabad.

Since this trip was planned as a surprise, the flights were not booked well in advance. Still, we were able to get a ticket at a better price which is almost at par with 2AC train cost. It was a 3-day trip which we had planned over a weekend plus Monday. We had everything planned on our own for this trip. We had booked most of the stuffs online and planned to commute using local transport and uber/ola for sight seeing.

We started early in the morning from Bengaluru. The fly time is around 50 minutes to Hyderabad. We reached Hyderabad by 8.30AM. We had a booking at Hotel Sai Prakash located at the station road Nampalli. We took Ola to reach the hotel which costed us close to 800Rs. Surprisingly, we had a tough morning because the hotel staff was not good at welcoming the guests who had booked online. They did not oblige us to check in though there were plenty of rooms available. Somehow they agreed to keep our luggage in cloak room till 2PM which was their check in time. We had booked this hotel because, Hotel Kamat was just opposite to it, which we thought would be a good option to have food. So, we dropped our luggage at the cloak room and headed to Hotel Kamat for breakfast. As expected, we got tasty Idly, Vada with Sambar and Chatny. We decided to finish breakfast and visit Nehru Zoological park and Salarjung Museum to pass the time till 2PM.

Depending on local transport or app based taxi service did not let us down to explore our destinations. We used to get Ola/Uber at convenience. We booked Ola and reached Nehru Zoological park. The zoo remains closed on Monday, so one should plan accordingly to visit this place. The zoo was open by the time we reached there by 10AM. But there was not much people since it was early. We got our tickets for 35Rs per head and entered the zoo. One could also opt for battery operated car tour with in the park at an extra cost. The zoo has good collection of animals. However since it had rained heavily for few days, the safari was closed due to which we could not see the lions over there. Otherwise we spotted bears, jackals, Cheetah, leopard, Tiger, varieties of monkeys, birds etc. If there are kids in the group, they would enjoy this place. The place also offers bicycle to ride around the park at a nominal cost. We finished seeing the special creatures by walk and were about to return. But we felt a bit tired. We found benches across the zoo to sit and relax ourselves. When we were heading back, we witnessed lots of people entering the park. So, by 11AM or so lots of people enter the park and it may get crowded. So plan to enter early and watch the special creatures at ease. Overall, the place has good facility and people who are interested in zoo's can visit this place. 

Zoo entrance

After exploring the Zoo, we headed to explore the Salarjung Museum. Again we used Ola to reach this place. The museum has collection of lots of stuffs from Salarjung era. It also has stuffs from western, Europe, and lots of other geographies. The place is good for the people who are interested in History. The entry fee for this museum is 20Rs for Indians. For foreigners its a bit expensive. One more point to note here is that, the museum restricts people carrying bags to their premises. Except for very small bags or ladies purse or kids water/milk bottle they wont allow any bags to inside. There is a baggage counter across the museum. Visitors have to deposit their bags here and enter the museum. It took approximately around 1 hour for us to explore this museum. After this, we headed back to the hotel and finished our lunch at Kamat again and went for checkin. Yes, now we are checking in :) The bad experience with the hotel carried forward with the passages being stinky. We had to walk all the way up for 2 floors with luggage because lift was simply turned off and the hotel management gave a damn to it. We entered the room and got freshened up and decided to rest for couple of hours.
Since there was rain predicted in evening, we decided to head to the most busiest and famous Charminar. We took an auto to reach the Charminar entrance. The crowd was so buzzing here and one would get lost in the crowd here. We went to explore Chowmohalla palace which is at a walking distance from Charminar. The palace is a must visit I would say for the variety and history it offers. The entry fee for this palace is 50Rs for Indians and the palace would remain closed on Friday. It took around 1.5 hours for us to explore this place and we started heading back to Charminar street just to meet the thunderstorms on the way. The rain was just so heavy that the road became swimming pool in no time. We just entered some shop and started shopping there. My wife is good at negotiating with the shops, which she proved again. The fellow was telling around 3000 for some article which he finally agreed to give at 1/3rd of the price. Thats the level of bargain one has to do with those people. The moment they realise that we are visitors and not natives, they start quoting exorbitant prices. We should hold our nerves to bargain and get at the best price. The entire process took around 1hour. Still rain did not slow down. We decided to start back because we had to yet reach the hotel. It was already 8PM. We tried so many autos, nobody was ready to come to the location our hotel was in. The reason being there was too much water logging in that surrounding, nobody wanted to risk their vehicle going there. One fellow agreed to come, to our surprise without any extra demands. Yes, such people still exist. He took all possible routes he knew to drop us off quickly. With all his wit and skills, we reached our hotel by 10PM. Yes, it took 2 hours in that water logged roads to reach 5km. We took parcel from Kamat for dinner and slept.

Busy road of Charminar

Chowmahalla palace entrance

On day 2, we started with breakfast at Kamat and we had booked Ramoji film city one day tour. We had booked the tickets online. The film city provides buses to pick the customers from the city to their property. The buses operate at a nominal cost of 250rs per person for their service. In morning they picked us by 8AM and by 9AM we were dropped at the entrance of the filmcity where we had to redeem our online ticket to the film-city voucher. From here the bus took us to the film-city and by 9.45 we were there to witness the welcome dance by the crew. Since we entered the theme park early, we were the first ones to visit all the shows that were available there. We also got to explore these at not much hassle since we were at the front of the queue always. By 12.45 we had finished all the shows. We had some light snacks in one of the cafes there and headed for bus tour around the park. These bus tour operation starts at 1PM and they continue till evening. The bus tour takes around the theme park. There will be a guide who will be explaining various facilities/properties that are available there. After that, we will be dropped back to the main stage again where in there will be a closing ceremony/show. Since we had lot of time after this, there was an option to explore various rides like breakdance, dragon etc. But we chose to sit back and enjoy those. The dance show started by 6PM in the evening. The bus which picked us from the city would head back to the city again only at 8PM. So, forcefully, we were waiting in the theme park till 8PM to depart. From the theme park we just took their shuttle to reach the main entrance from where we boarded the bus that picked us from the city. We reached the hotel by 9.30PM. Again, from Kamat we took parcel and finished our dinner. I would say the film city is well organized with its crew members assisting the visitors in the premise always. So, if you are in Hyderabad, and is ready to walk a lot, you should really experience the shows and other stuffs that are available in Ramoji.

Welcome dance

Stunt show

Bahubali Sets

On day3 we had our flight at 10.30PM. We chose this flight for two reasons. One  we thought we could cover some more interesting palces in Hyderabad. Second being, the flight combo with this flight was coming out to be economical. But this choice proved to be a bit wrong, having us waiting at airport for 7 hours :( We had to wait not because flight got delayed. But because, there was not much to explore after our 2-day excursion. We had plans to visit the Lumbini park, Golconda fort, Hussain Sagar lake, Shri Jagannath temple, Birla Mandir. But since the previous 2-days were a bit exhaustive, we woke up a bit late. We realized that we were already late for hussain sagar lake and the birla mandir. Hence we decided to drop them. Later we planned to take Ola rental for 4 hours and planned to visit the Lumbini park and the Golconda fort. It was pretty hot since it was already 12 by the time we started. We first went near Lumbini park and took photos from outside. Later we proceeded to the Golconda fort. The fort remains open from 8AM till 5.30 PM. The entry fee is 15 per person. It is 200 for foreigners. We had forgotten to take caps in this trip. The fort just reminded us of our mistake. It was too sunny and the reflection from the fort walls made it feel more hotter. One should be really strong enough to climb till the top of this fort. We need to cross close to 700 steep steps to reach the top. We entered this fort with a mindset to climb how much ever is possible till 2.30PM because, we had a 4hour rental. So did not want to waste much time, and head to airport with that. My wife could come along till half way; after that I raced to the top and came back in 10-15 minutes. It was not far from where my wife gave up. It is just in the interest of time, she chose to stay back. We climbed down the fort and had some tea with biscuits on the way down. I would not describe the importance of this for here. Just google it, wikipedia gives all that you need. Once we were out of the fort, my wife explored some more pearl items in the certified outlet nearby. She took an article there after which we headed to airport. We were dropped at the airport by 3.45PM. We had some food at one of the restaurants there and waited for 6 long hours to start the boarding. We reached home by 1AM with sweet memories.

Buddha statue lumbini park

Golconda fort entrance

View of the fort from foothill

View from the top

View from the top

Notes:
1. One can easily plan a 2-3 days trip to Hyderabad.
2. If you are planning with a family sized 4 or above better to opt for private vehicle for local sight seeing. Otherwise you can easily rely on Ola/Uber/Auto/Buses.
3. Book tickets online for Ramoji filmcity. This avoids the queue at the location.
4. It is wiser to chose the pickup facility provided by the filmcity if you are less than 3 people. Otherwise go for private vehicle.
5. Book hotel well in advance to get better deals.
6. Check for the operational timings of all the attractions you want to visit. In Hyderabad few stuffs are closed on Friday, few on Monday. Have a clear idea on these.
7. Stay safe at crowded places like charminar. People may not just try to cheat you, there may be lot of thieves as well. Beware of them.
8. Its generally hot at Hyderabad. So, better to chose the hotel with AC provision.
9. Check for the weather before going outstation. Prepare according to weather by carrying umbrella/rain coats etc.
10. Language may not be a barrier in Hyderabad. People speak Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Oriya. So that should not be an issue.
11. Personally, I do not know from where the pearl reaches Hyderabad. Though it is not available natively here, it is all imported from other parts. So, personally I do not advise anyone to buy pearl here :)

We enjoyed this trip thoroughly. Hope you plan a visit and enjoy too.