today was saturday and i had nothing planned.i was in my aunt's houz when suddenly akku called and suggested a visit to golconda.i was up for it and soon i joined akku,arif and farukh.we made our way through the small alleys surrounding the golconda in an autorickshaw.as it was a weekend we could see a lot of tourists,including a sizeable amount of foreigners.i already had a printout of the map of the fort and we followed it.it took an hour for us to reach the top most point, bala hisar.it offered us some spectacular views of the surroundings. i could spot some other landmarks like tramati baradari,the qutb shahi tombs,the gandipet lake and others fro there.we had sat here for sometime before seeing the rest of the fort.we saw many important buildings like the armory,akanna maddanna's office,the diwan e khas,ibrahim quli qutb shah's mosque,barood khana,the hamam and others.the whole fort is beautiful and on reading the various stories associated with the fort and seeing the very place where it happened one gets transformed back in time.we took 3 hours to fully cover the fort and in the process didnt miss much of it.

It was a long time since we had been to a heritage place so yesterday me n shoaib headed to malakpet for raymond's tomb and asmangadh palace.i read abt these in some
websites and decided to check it out.i located the locations in google maps.we got
down at malakpet and decided to walk from there.after some confused wanderings
we located a signboard of A.P.tourism directing towards raymond's tomb.we took the
smaller bylane branching off from the malakpet dilsukhbagar road,near the tv tower.
from there we followed the google maps directions.soon,while walking, i saw among
the newer buildings, an old yellowish building with a distinct architecture.as soon as i saw it, i deduced it to be the Asmangadh palace.it was built by asman jhavi,who was a prime minister in the nizam's court.though it has been named as a palace,it doesnt look like one.unfortunately, it is located in the campus of st.josephs school.the security guard there didnt allow to take pics.on asking him why it was not allowed,he said that it was the principal's order.i was annoyed,here we r searching for this place among the mazes and clutters of disorganized buildings,only to find ourselves not able to take any pics.well what could we do!.we just strolled around it,took a good view of it,all under the watchful eyes of the security guard,who looked as if it was his own property.the palace itself is nothing much,it's more of a mansion.soon we were out of the school limits and we took some pics from outside.then we headed towards raymond's obelisk,which was much easier to find.it is situated on a small hillock,which offers some good views of hyderabad.it has two structures, one is the obelisk itself,which has the initials JR written on the four sides.the other is a greek style building.both are beautiful.we took some pics and sat there sometime taking in the view.after sometime we left.we noted down the route we took and also marked some landmarks for our future trips.
RAZZAQ