Hyderabad in September: Lake and Palace

There is a small golden Ganesha bolted to the dashboard of the taxi, under his own little canopy, facing the traffic. Within about four minutes of leaving the airport you understand the appointment: the remover of obstacles rides up front here, and he is working.

Hyderabad was a work trip that kept refusing to behave like one. On paper, an office campus in HITEC City. In practice, a festival, a lake with its own cable-stayed bridge, a monsoon that repainted the sky every evening, and a night at a palace where the dining table seats a hundred and one.

A mural at arrivals

Rajiv Gandhi International makes its case before you reach the taxi rank. The arrivals hall runs a full-length relief mural of Hindu mythology, painted and modeled and lit, above a living green wall with a waterfall running down it. Airports usually spend their ambition on duty free. This one spends it on a wall you walk past with a suitcase, and it works, because you slow down.

Long colorful relief mural of Hindu mythological scenes above a living green wall with a waterfall inside the airport terminal — Rajiv Gandhi International opens with a mural and a waterfall, and the taxi with Ganesha, riding up front as he does here.

Small golden Ganesha idol under a canopy on a taxi dashboard facing Hyderabad traffic — Rajiv Gandhi International opens with a mural and a waterfall, and the taxi with Ganesha, riding up front as he does here.

Cyberabad

The western half of Hyderabad is a second city called Cyberabad, and the name is only half in jest. The office was at Sattva Knowledge City, a campus where the tenant boards read like a stock index: JPMorgan, State Street, LSEG, Swiss Re, KPMG, AMD, Intel. Between the towers someone has stretched a billowing white ETFE canopy, part greenhouse, part cloud, and under it the plazas run fountains all day, a note of calm for twenty thousand people at their laptops.

View down onto the billowing white ETFE canopy stretched between office towers — Sattva Knowledge City from the upper floors, the ETFE canopy billowing between the towers.

Blue hour view over the campus with the JPMorgan tower lit up and the canopy glowing below — Sattva Knowledge City from the upper floors, the ETFE canopy billowing between the towers.

At street level the campus behaves like a small town square that happens to be owned by asset managers. Office crowds cross the plazas in waves at the hour, thinning to nothing in between, and there are more fountains than a place of work strictly requires: turquoise pools with tree islands set into them, water channels with stepping stones laid across, stone seating on islands under the canopy. Somebody clearly decided that twenty thousand people looking at screens all day should have moving water to walk past on the way to lunch, and they were right.

Office workers walking and chatting in groups on a plaza between tall glass towers — The plazas, and their many fountains, busy all day.

Landscaped courtyard beneath a steel and ETFE canopy with stool seating on stone islands over a water feature — The plazas, and their many fountains, busy all day.

The details are where the campus stops being generic, and they are all small. A corporate cricket team in matching black and yellow jerseys lining up for a photo at lunch, entirely serious about the formation. A hand-painted cycle rickshaw parked on a lawn as sculpture, a giant eye down one side and a peacock down the other, retired from carrying anybody. Steel sky bridges strung between towers with yellow accents, at a height where nobody on the ground ever looks. And a dragonfly on a bare twig, holding its position against a wall of blue glass with the ease of something that was here a long time before the glass was.

Colleagues in matching black and yellow cricket team jerseys lined up for a photo in a busy office plaza — Campus life: the cricket team, the peacock rickshaw, and a very at-home dragonfly.

Brightly hand painted decorative cycle rickshaw with a large eye and peacock motif displayed on a lawn — Campus life: the cricket team, the peacock rickshaw, and a very at-home dragonfly.

After dark the whole thing switches genre. The gate pylons light up, the JPMorgan tower glows over a string-lit canopy, a bar called Raasta draws a queue in saris, and a guitar the size of a bus announces the Hard Rock Cafe, HITEC City branch. A tech district after dark turns everything to neon.

Illuminated Gate 3 pylon at night with a tenant board listing AMD, Intel, Silicon Labs, MathWorks and BlueYonder — Cyberabad after hours, the Hard Rock guitar marking HITEC City.

Night view of a landscaped office plaza with lit garden beds surrounded by glass towers including one signed JPMorgan Chase — Cyberabad after hours, the Hard Rock guitar marking HITEC City.

Getting anywhere

Between any two points in Hyderabad there is a negotiation, and the yellow auto-rickshaw is its chief negotiator. They travel in packs and park in packs, tucked into shaded lanes between a hedge and a big tree, waiting. Every one of them is also advertising space, the back panel sold to cab companies and furniture shops and whatever else in Telugu script, so a traffic jam here doubles as a magazine you read through the windscreen. One of them had "4 IN ALL" painted across the back, which is either a seating capacity or a philosophy, and I hoped it could keep the promise.

The traffic itself is a slow honking organism that reorganizes constantly and never quite stops. Motorcycles fill every gap, an elevated metro runs overhead, construction hoardings narrow the lanes, and somewhere in it the Cyberabad Traffic Police are working with signs and hand gestures and considerable patience. Everybody has a Ganesha on the dashboard. On that road, it looks like insurance.

Night traffic jam seen from a car behind a yellow auto rickshaw covered in Telugu ads near an elevated metro station — The auto-rickshaw, carrying passengers and ads in equal measure.

Night street with motorcyclists and cars queued beside a construction fence and lit office buildings — The auto-rickshaw, carrying passengers and ads in equal measure.

Ganesh Chaturthi

The timing landed me in Ganesh Chaturthi, the festival where the city installs clay Ganesha idols everywhere from office lobbies to lakesides, garlands them in marigolds, and then carries them to the water to dissolve. The idol near the office sat dressed in white against a wall of red flowers, framed by hanging strings of marigolds, entirely dignified about the arrangement.

Marigolds went on everything that would hold them, including the gates. Under one of those gates, on the cool granite in the shade, a white street dog was asleep on its side with the festival going on above it, and that photograph tells you more about the mood of the festival than the idols do. Nothing was hurried. The city dressed itself up and then carried on.

Ganesha idol dressed in white with marigold garlands framed by strings of marigolds — Ganesh Chaturthi: the idol in its marigolds, and a street dog asleep on the cool granite below.

White street dog asleep on granite paving in front of an ornate white and gold gate decorated with marigold garlands — Ganesh Chaturthi: the idol in its marigolds, and a street dog asleep on the cool granite below.

The lake the tech park keeps

Durgam Cheruvu translates as "hidden lake", which stopped being accurate the moment they built a cable-stayed bridge over it and lit the pylons blue. It sits in a bowl of granite right below HITEC City, and it is where the district goes to remember it has a shoreline: joggers, herons, sculptural flamingos, and a 500-year-old olive tree from Spain planted in a pair of giant silver hands, which is the kind of sentence Hyderabad just hands you.

The Durgam Cheruvu cable bridge framed by overhanging leaves with a heron on a rock in the water — Durgam Cheruvu below the office, down to the garden lizard on the bank.

Two pink flamingo sculptures at the edge of Durgam Cheruvu lake with the cable bridge behind — Durgam Cheruvu below the office, down to the garden lizard on the bank.

Telangana Tourism runs boats from the far bank, and taking one at dusk is the best thing to do in the district. You cast off across water the color of weak tea, pass a heron standing on a rock that does not acknowledge you, and slide right under the deck of the bridge while the sky does its monsoon watercolors overhead.

Then you come out the other side and the skyline resolves into rooftop logos. Qualcomm. Electronic Arts. The Inorbit mall sign switching on across the water as the light drops. It is the fondest and strangest sightseeing cruise I have taken: granite outcrops, wading birds, five hundred years of olive tree behind you in a pair of silver hands, and a skyline advertising the world's tech industry back at you across a lake that used to be called hidden.

View from the bow of a boat passing under the deck of the cable bridge at dusk — The dusk cruise: a bridge, several herons, and a skyline of glass towers.

The cable bridge at sunset from the lakeside with the HITEC City skyline and glass dome behind — The dusk cruise: a bridge, several herons, and a skyline of glass towers.

At night the bridge takes over completely. The pylons go electric blue, the road curves toward it in a river of tail lights, and from a rooftop it stops looking like infrastructure and turns into the city's own nightly light show.

Night aerial view of the cable bridge with pylons lit blue over the lake and city traffic below — Durgam Cheruvu after dark, in the blue it wears every night.

Night view over a multi lane road curving toward the blue lit cable bridge with the lake beyond — Durgam Cheruvu after dark, in the blue it wears every night.

The hotel with the monsoon pool

Home base was the ITC Kohenur, which takes the "grand hotel" brief literally: arched aubergine corridors, chandeliers in the walkways, and an infinity pool aimed straight at HITEC City. The monsoon adopted that pool. In the evenings the sky staged something enormous and gray over it, and the water held perfectly still and gave the whole performance back like it had rehearsed.

ITC Kohenur hotel entrance under monsoon clouds with fountains, silver palms and the tower behind — The ITC Kohenur, its corridors in full Nizam-style grandeur.

Hotel corridor with aubergine walls, white arches on pillars and tiered crystal chandeliers — The ITC Kohenur, its corridors in full Nizam-style grandeur.

Infinity pool framed by frangipani and silver fan palms under an overcast sky looking toward a green rocky ridge — The pool and the monsoon it reflected, evening after evening.

Polished stone pebble stack sculpture beside the infinity pool with the curved hotel tower behind — The pool and the monsoon it reflected, evening after evening.

The terraces earned their keep too. There is a charbagh-style water garden up there, the formal four-part Mughal plan rendered in mosaic-tiled channels, lit from below at night with the skyline glowing behind it, which is a fairly direct statement about which history this building thinks it belongs to. Next to it an open-air bar under a wooden pavilion with conical fabric lamps, wicker chairs, a fairy-lit palm, and the city laying its lights out below. The monsoon eased off most evenings after sunset, which is exactly when the terraces filled.

Illuminated mosaic tiled water channels in a formal charbagh style garden terrace at night with the skyline behind — Terrace season, the monsoon easing off most evenings after sunset.

Open air terrace bar at dusk with a wooden pavilion, conical fabric lamps and wicker dining sets overlooking city lights — Terrace season, the monsoon easing off most evenings after sunset.

Peshawri, eating with your hands

The serious eating happened at Peshawri, the hotel's North-West Frontier place, where the walls are rough flagstone hung with tribal rugs, the water comes in copper tumblers, and you eat with your hands, apron on, no cutlery in sight. The dal simmers overnight, the kebabs arrive charred and unapologetic, and the breads deserve their own paragraph: laccha paratha in flaky spirals, mint-dusted rotis, naan the size of a modest awning.

Rustic restaurant with flagstone walls, hanging rugs, rough hewn chairs with kilim cushions and windows onto modern buildings — Peshawri: no forks, and a dal simmered overnight.

Antique tribal rug hung on a flagstone wall above a table set with copper tumblers and check napkins — Peshawri: no forks, and a dal simmered overnight.

Tandoori dishes on mustard plates: green marinade tandoori chicken, shredded roast mutton and laccha parathas — The bread course, which in my case was every course.

Close up of a flaky spiral laccha paratha with charred spots and a mint dusted tandoori roti beside it — The bread course, which in my case was every course.

Elsewhere the range was wider than a work trip has any right to. Burma Burma did khao suey and a skillet of stir-fried noodles with tofu and a red curry soup, all vegetarian, and it needed no help from meat. The Golconda Pavilion downstairs turned out a fried chicken burger in a seeded bun with coleslaw and onion rings on branded paper, and it was a very good one, which I mention because a hotel that runs a North-West Frontier grill at that standard has no obligation to also get the burger right.

Skillet of spicy stir fried noodles with tofu, a bowl of fried rice and a red curry soup on a restaurant table — Two ends of the same appetite: Burmese noodles one night, a very good fried chicken burger another.

Large fried chicken burger in a seeded bun with coleslaw, fries and onion rings on branded paper — Two ends of the same appetite: Burmese noodles one night, a very good fried chicken burger another.

And then there are Hyderabad's bars, which commit to their themes wholeheartedly. One has bolted a full orange Fiat to the ceiling, upside down, above the spirits. One is called The Glass Onion and announces itself with a neon onion wearing sunglasses. One is a Goan beach shack with a signpost measuring the distance to actual Goa.

Retro themed bar with the upside down orange Fiat on a mirrored ceiling above the counter and framed vintage car photos — A Fiat on the ceiling, an onion in sunglasses, and a signpost to Goa.

Neon sign of a white onion mascot wearing sunglasses beside pink script reading The Glass Onion — A Fiat on the ceiling, an onion in sunglasses, and a signpost to Goa.

The palace on the hill

Then Falaknuma. In 1884 the Nizam's prime minister built himself a palace on a hill 600 meters above the city, shaped like a scorpion, named "mirror of the sky", and eventually handed it to the sixth Nizam, reportedly because the Nizam had admired it rather too openly. It is now a Taj hotel, which means that for the price of dinner you can arrive up a cobbled drive past banyan trees and a horse-drawn carriage, and watch the facade go gold at dusk.

Cobblestone driveway curving past lawns, banyan trees and granite outcrops with a horse drawn carriage in the distance — Taj Falaknuma Palace, reached by a cobbled drive and a waiting carriage.

Gray and white palace exterior with domed rooftop pavilions and a cobbled circular driveway with a flower roundabout — Taj Falaknuma Palace, reached by a cobbled drive and a waiting carriage.

Pigeons in the fountain, turkeys on the lawn

The gardens run on their own logic, which is mostly the birds' logic. Carved ochre stone gateways frame a white fountain and a red arch beyond it, formal and symmetrical and clearly designed to be walked through slowly. In one scalloped basin in front of the arcaded facade, a committee of pigeons was bathing without any regard for the composition. On the lawn near a column base, a delegation of white turkeys patrolled with a full tail fanned out, behaving like self-appointed peacocks and getting away with it entirely.

From the terrace, where antique cannons still point out over the balustrade, the whole of Hyderabad spreads below in the haze, flat and enormous and slightly unreal. Wedding parties queue politely for their turn at the railing. The palace is 600 meters up, and the view is the entire argument for having built it there.

Ornately carved ochre stone gateway in a manicured garden framing a white fountain and a red arch beyond — Palace fauna: pigeons in the fountain, turkeys on the lawn, Hyderabad in the haze.

Pigeons bathing in a scalloped stone fountain in front of an arcaded palace facade — Palace fauna: pigeons in the fountain, turkeys on the lawn, Hyderabad in the haze.

Inside, where the hotel stops pretending

Inside, the palace stops pretending to be a hotel at all. The marble staircase climbs between caryatid lamps under rows of portraits. The ballroom, the green drawing room and the frescoed fountain room follow one after another until you lose all sense of scale. And the famous dining hall holds a single table for 101 guests, silver at every seat, reputedly with acoustics tuned so the Nizam could hear a whisper from the far end. I whispered, and honestly could not tell whether it carried.

Grand marble staircase with a floral carpet runner, caryatid statues holding lamps and rows of framed portraits — Interiors that make you stand up a little straighter.

View down a marble staircase into a lobby with hexagonal black and white floor tiles and green marble columns — Interiors that make you stand up a little straighter.

Immense long dining table set with silver goblets flanked by green leather chairs beneath a gilded ceiling and chandelier — The 101-seat table, the marble fountain under its chandelier, and the Gol Bungalow under its stained-glass dome.

White marble cherub fountain beneath a crystal chandelier flanked by royal portraits — The 101-seat table, the marble fountain under its chandelier, and the Gol Bungalow under its stained-glass dome.

The library that nearly ended the evening

The library nearly ended the evening. It is a carved, coffered, two-story affair modeled on Windsor Castle's, and the cases hold things you do not expect to find at a hotel: an Encyclopaedia Britannica Eleventh Edition on its own revolving stand, Harry Clarke's illustrated Hans Christian Andersen, spines reading "Indian Princes and the Crown". Somewhere below, my colleagues were ordering a second round. I was reading catalog labels.

Grand palace library with ornate carved coffered wooden ceiling, vintage ceiling fans and wall to wall bookcases — The library, worth an evening on its own.

Wall of tall glass fronted mahogany library cabinets filled with leather bound volumes with catalog labels — The library, worth an evening on its own.

Dinner under a tiger hunt

Dinner happened under chandeliers in a room where a gilt-framed painting of a colonial tiger hunt watches you eat, which does something to your appetite that the kitchen then puts right: tandoori plates, a basket of papads, and a dessert sampler that ends with a bright pink sorbet served in a little clay pot, a last flourish on the way out.

Heritage dining room with crystal chandelier, cane backed chairs and a portrait of a nobleman in period dress — Dinner at the palace, down to the pink sorbet in its clay pot.

Gilt framed period painting of a hunter standing over tiger carcasses above a set dining table — Dinner at the palace, down to the pink sorbet in its clay pot.

Hyderabad, then: a city running its past and its future on adjacent hills, with a hidden lake between them and marigolds on everything. The Nizams built mirrors of the sky, the tech parks build mirrors of each other, and the monsoon looks at both and keeps painting. I went for the office and came back loyal to a bridge, a bread course, and a library. More than I expected to carry home from a work trip.