India Attractions

Ganga Sagar: Pain, bliss and sanctification

Advantages: Read the review
Disadvantages: Read the review

...Muni),' Saab teertha baar baar, ganga sagar ek baar (blessings you get by visiting Ganga Sagar once surpluses several pilgrimage to other pilgrim’s place). I was amazed by not only the magnitude of visitors but also by these pilgrims unbounded yearning for blessing. Hunched old men and women, babies tied on their back, all these are common sights. What is bewildering is that a death at this blessed place is joy for its family, the common saying ...
...mythology, joining the sea, The Ganga flowed through the mortal remains of 60,000 sons of King Sagar and thereby liberating their souls for ever. The sons of King Sagar showed the daring to stop the holly horse carrying the blessings of Lord Indra for his Ashwamedha Yogna. The captured and tied it near Kapil Muni’s ashram and it was the Muni who condoned them. This is the legend which attracts millions to this remote island in West Bengal at its ...

roktimdutta 07.01.2010 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Ganga Sagar Mela, West Bengal

Could this be the World's Silliest Museum?

Advantages: It's unique - make of that what you will
Disadvantages: Sack those awful attendants and get CCTV if you are SO paranoid

...there's nowhere better than the Sudha Cars Museum - see, he even manages a pun with his name; Sudhakar and Sudha Cars - is there no end to this man's creativity? Do we HAVE to go to the Car Museum? On the third day of our holiday in Hyderabad, our lovely driver Mohin told us we were going to the Car Museum. We'd just been to the rather dodgy Ramoji Film City and I wasn't feeling all that excited by the prospect of what I expected to be a dusty ...
...that had a small car museum a few years ago and it was pretty rubbish. My expectations were for more of the same. We pulled up at the museum, parked in the small car park and Mohin went off to pay for our tickets. As is so often the case, the price was much inflated for foreign visitors and was (if memory serves me correctly) 150 Rp each - or about £2. We left Mohin behind - for a taxi driver, I suppose looking at cars was a bit of a busman's holiday ...

koshkha 01.01.2010 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Sudha Cars Museum, Hyderabad

Snow in Southern India? No kidding

Advantages: Unique - and that's not an exageration
Disadvantages: A Health and Safety Officer's worst nightmare

...in the UK, surrounded by snow and enduring the longest cold-spell in almost 30 years, it would be easy to forget how exciting snow used to be when we were young. It's one of those growing-up things, I suppose; you hit an age at which snow stops meaning fun and days off school and starts representing power cuts, hours of digging out the driveway and treacherous journeys sliding around the roads. I struggle to remember how it must have felt to see ...
...did until we went to Snow World in Hyderabad, India. A couple of days earlier our driver had asked us – a propos of absolutely nothing we assumed – had we ever seen snow. 'Of course' we said – most years there's a bit, not usually very much and it causes total chaos. We thought no more about it. Then on our third day in the city we'd been to Ramoji Film City (more on that another time), off to the bizarre and barking Sudha Cars Museum and our final ...

koshkha 05.01.2010 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Snow World, Hyderabad

This Charming Charminar

Advantages: It's the most 'must see' attraction of Hyderabad
Disadvantages: Watch those steps!

...went there it have been the Charminar. It must be on every website and on the cover of every map or guidebook of the city ever printed. It might not quite have the lure of the Taj Mahal or India's great palaces but it pricked my imagination. If you'd asked for two famous things, the second would have been Biryani, the rice-based dish for which the city is famed but the Charminar would have been a long way ahead of the biryani. There's something about ...
...though I knew little about the building or the city in general. It took about 30 hours from arriving in the city to actually seeing the famous building. We'd arrived early the day before and we could have asked to see it on day one, but the weather was bad and I didn't want anything to come between me and my enjoyment of Hyderabad's iconic building. My husband pretty much leaves the holiday planning up to me and although I'd waved a few guidebooks ...

koshkha 28.12.2009 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of The Charminar, Hyderabad

Dioramas, Dinosaurs and Doulton Damsels

Advantages: Lots of variety
Disadvantages: Tacky China Ladies - WHY?

...were a rich man The Birla family of super-wealthy industrialists have two key areas of philanthropic activity; they build gorgeous Hindu temples and they support the growth and development of Indian science through by building science museums, planetaria and science institutes and endowing prizes for young scientists. Our morning of general 'Birla-ness' in Hyderabad had started with a visit to the Birla Mandir temple before we moved on to the ...
...the businesses of the Industrialist Birla family. Religion likewise - hence their habit of building temples. And I suspect that the reason for including a planetarium is rather more about astrology and fortune telling than about good hard 'Large Hadron Collider - Birth of the Universe' style science. I'm a mess without my little China Girl We stood back to let the kids head in first and they made straight for the ground floor and began creating ...

koshkha 27.12.2009 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Birla Science Museum, Hyderabad