On 8th Feb, 2014, we started from Kondapur, Hyderabad at 9 am
on our bike towards Bidar, Karnataka. The distance is nearly 120km and targeted
to arrive within two and a half hour. The rout is pretty straight forward. Take
the Hyderabad – Mumbai highway, go nearly 100 km and take right just after
Zaheerabad, go nearly 20 km more and you are at Bidar. Most part of the road is
good and some part is okay. We haven’t faced any bad road though. The landscape
is good in few parts of the road. We liked the scenery on the road between
Zaheerabad and Bidar most. It was a combination of pitch black road, red
dry soil and a feet tall white grasses. No as such difficulty to reach the
place, we didn't even take a break other than a photo shooting one. We reached
nearly at 11:45 am.
Fortunately or unfortunately, Bidar is not a tourist place.
So if you are habituated with a tourist friendly environment, don’t expect that
here. The most named hotels also don’t have a guarded parking lot. We first
arrived at Hotel Mayura (just opp. to bus stand). The guy in the
reception was disturbed when we asked whether they have a parking place in
which the bike will be safe at night. He replied, 'aisa to koi nehi puchhta, sab
samne eisehi rakh dete hai' ('no one asks this, everyone just parks in front of
the hotel') and the open parking in front of the hotel was saying 'Parking at
your risk' in big red letters. So, with no other way, we left for searching
another hotel. The next known name to me was Hotel Sapna International,
which was nearby (by Google map) but not visually prominent as it is in a busy
building filled with different type of shops. This hotel too doesn't have a
parking but we were given a parking at the opposite hotel's parking lot. The
reception was decent and the rooms looked clean and okay.
As i said, Bidar is not a tourist place, though the food was
real tasty, don't expect decency in restaurants and hygiene is not a word in
their dictionary. Even local people were giving a strange look at us. Anyways,
we had our lunch and started for our tour.
The first destination was Bidar Fort. We didn't expect
much from it but even in the first look it gave a good feel. The high long wall
of the fort, a wide trench away from the road, is prominent with its
royal and stubborn structure. The entrance is the best part of it. Narrow road
goes inside the fort within the high walls and huge gates. From a concept of
fort, this is nothing new, but is certainly the one we liked most. Some song
sequence shooting of local movie or something was going on a section on the
entrance, but it didn't block the road. The maintained portion of the fort
contains Solah Khamba Mosque and a museum, containing some locks and
guns from that time, nothing much interesting though. There are other parts of
the fort which is not as such maintained but open to roam around, was
having a huge area guarded by fort walls, Rangin Mahal and few other
places (not as such named). Rangin Mahal is no more ‘rangin’ (colored) and just
the left over part of it. We roamed around here and there for some time and
took some photos. In a sunny day this fort can certainly give some good pics.
Map says Bahmani Tombs is there in that compound but we were not able to
find it out. Though nothing specific to see, but still the old historic feel
was there and we liked it.
Our next destination was Khwaja Mahmud Gawan Madrasa.
Somehow Google wasn't able to find it out on the map, so we took help from
passerby and reached this place. It was a residential madrasa made more
than 500yrs ago. Again, nothing much left but we liked the front view as few of
the works on the walls with blue things (don’t know what are those) still left.
Rest of the places we visited were Chaubara, which is
a clock on a brick made tower and Gurudwara Nanak Jhira Sahib, which is
a gurudwara little far from the town. There is another place we visited which i would suggest anyone not to go (even if someone is ready to pay some bucks for
it) and this place was Narasimha Zarna - Cave Temple. This is a cave
temple where you can go through a cave with muddy (and don’t know what else) water
up to your chest and do a ‘darsan’. We certainly didn't do it but even the
outside on the temple itself was so disgusting with open dress changing place
for men and women that we left the place within minutes from arrival. We
visited some Bidriware (a famous Indian metal handicraft originated from
Bidar) shops too to purchase some mementos.
So, we thought we are done with our tour and ready to head
back for Hyderabad next morning, but an interesting (rather irritating) story
was still waiting for us and that was, the bugs in the hotel room. The hotel room was actually full of small cockroaches and bugs
in the bed which we discovered in the middle of the night after the bugs started their
dinner with us. When we reported it to the hotel reception, it looked like this
didn't surprise them. Fortunately there were other room available and more
fortunately what was not having bugs, so we changed the room.
With the experience of last night, we planned to leave the
hotel as soon as possible in the morning, so left the hotel and started for
Hyderabad at nearly 10 am. As it takes less time while coming back than while
going, we reached Hyderabad nearly at 12:30 pm.
Again, though there was nothing much to see and had some bad
experience, we over all enjoyed the trip. After all, we 2 were on 2 – wheeler.
