The Sunday Time Travel Section
India’s Sleeping beauty awakes
India’s ancient principality of Hyderabad was once a carnival of palaces, decadence and concubines by the thousand. Now the city is thriving again
Stanley Stewart
Published: 28 November 2010
The tombs of Qutab Shahi kings (Michael Gebicki / Lonely Planet) For centuries, the nizams of Hyderabad were the most magnificent of Indian princes. They ruled a state the size of France from the grandest capital in the sub-continent. When Time magazine featured the seventh nizam on its cover in 1937, it declared what everyone had long acknowledged: he was the richest man in the world. Right into the 1960s, the nizam survived as the last echo of Mogul splendour in India.
Fifty years on, the royal fortune has vanished, the great palaces are draped in cobwebs and the dynasty has unravelled.
The present nizam lives anonymously in a seaside apartment in Turkey, unrecognised even by some of his nearest neighbours. Once the first port of call for viceroys and visiting royalty, Hyderabad now rarely makes it onto India’s tourist itineraries.
Slumbering in the heart of the Deccan plateau, the old royal capital is now remarkably visitor-free. Compared to the monumental attractions of Agra or Rajasthan, this is a secretive and romantic place.
At the end of crowded alleys, half-hidden behind high walls, surrounded by overgrown gardens, are the crumbling ghosts of the world of the nizams.
Until the discovery of new-world mines in the 18th century, the hills around Hyderabad were the world’s sole source of diamonds The most spectacular ghost is Golconda Fort, which lies justbeyond the modern city. This medieval fortress, which pre-dates the Asaf Jah dynasty, help sto explain their fabulous wealth. Until the discovery of the new-world mines in the 18th century, the hills around Hyderabad were the world’s sole source of diamonds. The colossal gateways, the elephant traps, and the six-mile walls of Golconda safeguarded the hoard of diamonds that once included the likes of the Koh-i-noor.
I spent a day here, clambering through the ruins of mortuary baths and palaces, through skeletons of durbar halls, pavilionsand pleasure gardens. But I needed a contemporary account to put some flesh on its stark bones. When Tavernier, the French jeweller, visited the fortress, he described an effete and sybaritic society including 20,000 courtesans.
The journals of European travellers of the 17th and 18th centuries were filled with Hyderabadi superlatives. “Elegant, clean, opulent and well planned,” sighed M de Thévenot in the late 1650s. Fountains sent sprays of scented waters heavenward, marble facades glistened in the sunlight and musicians played for dancing girls in moonlit pavilions.
Today’s Hyderabad would disappoint them. All that clean and well-planned elegance has been rather overwhelmed by India.
All along the grand avenue of Patthar Gatti, jerry-built stalls of bangles, spices and chai barnacle the colonnades, while signboards, awnings and 400 years of betel juice obscure the elegant facades. The chaos, the febrile excitement, the unstoppable energy of the streets is part of the charm of India; in Hyderabad, it serves to make the echoes of the lost world of the nizams all the more poignant.
In the grounds of the Osmania Women’s College, I made my way past students sitting cross-legged between flowerbeds, reciting aloud from textbooks. A Palladian villa appeared through a screen of casuarina trees, like a mirage.
Built at the end of the 18th century, Hyderabad’s British Residency has been acclaimed as one of the most perfect British buildings in India. I climbed the wide entrance steps, passed beneath Corinthian columns and entered the ballroom, where cooing pigeons fluttered down from the upper galleries. A grand double staircase, littered with guano and old newspapers, led upstairs to ruinous bedrooms that were once the setting for one of India’s most romantic stories.
At the end of the 18th century, the British Resident in Hyderabad — effectively the ambassador — was James Kirkpatrick. He was seduced by the city and not only made the nizam a staunch ally of the British, but also became Hyderabad’s adopted son. He wore local dress, hennaed his hands like a Mogul nobleman, smoked a hookah, grew an Indian moustache and, scandalously, married Khair un-Nissa, the great-niece of the nizam’s prime minister, becoming a Muslim in order to do so.
The Falaknuma, now a Taj Hotel overlooks the city of Hyderabad (PR) Across town was Chowmahalla Palace, the official residence of the nizams and now a museum. The grand audience hall, modelled on that of the Persian Shah, is a masterpiece of Italian marble laid out beneath 19 vast chandeliers. Round the back, in a rear pavilion, I found what was left of the nizam’s collection of almost 60 cars — a handful of rusting models on deflated tyres, ranging from a 1906 Napier to a 1947 Buick Super Convertible.
Round at the rambling 18th-century Purani Haveli, it was the shoes that evoked the past. The sixth nizam was famous for his love of clothes, and often insisted on wearing brand-new ones every day. I climbed a dusty staircase to find his dressing room, lined with two 240ft wardrobes of Burmese teak. In the glass cabinets of the upper galleries, some of his shoes were still in place, as if an ageing valet had forgotten to pack them.
The Falaknuma is a grand neoclassical Palladian villa with... a library modelled on one at Windsor Castle It was the sixth nizam who fell in love with Hyderabad’s most splendid palace — the Falaknuma. Set atop a hill overlooking the city, it was built by the prime minister, who had just spent four months in England, staying at a number of country houses. The Falaknuma is a grand neoclassical Palladian villa with Italianate arcades, Corinthian columns, frescoed ceilings and a library modelled on one at Windsor Castle. At the inaugural ball in 1893, western visitors mingled with Indian royalty and aristocrats, making their way up the grand staircase to the mirrored ballroom. A string quartet played, champagne was served, chandeliers sparkled, and a hundred uniformed waiters stood like sentinels down the length of the colossal banquet table, laid with crystal, gold and silver.
The nizam was the guest of honour. When it came time for him to leave, he praised the new palace lavishly. There was a moment of awkward silence while the prime minister considered his options, before deciding that there weren’t any. He bowed. “But your Highness, I have built it for you,” he said. “Please accept this trifling palace as a gift from your faithful servant.”
The nizam spent much of the next 18 years in the Falaknuma, among the marble statuary, the Chinese porcelain, the priceless jade, and the 10,000 concubines. George V visited, Edward VIII came while he was Prince of Wales, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria was impressed by the nizam’s marksmanship and Tsar Nicholas II enjoyed the perfumed showers. Mercifully, the royal visits pre-dated the installation of hidden cameras in the guest rooms, with which a later nizam was said to have created India’s most extensive collection of pornography.
Eventually, the nizam drank himself to death in the Falaknuma. Some say his ghost still haunts the place; you will hear what sounds like the tinkle of ice in a glass on the wide verandas. His son, the seventh nizam, used the Falaknuma only as a guesthouse; it was said that nobody below the rank of viceroy was allowed to stay here. One of the last visitors was the president of India in the early 1950s, ironically the man whose arrival spelt the end of the nizam’s world. After that, the palace fell into disuse.
The dynasty was now in free fall, as India moved relentlessly towards independence and democracy. The seventh nizam became the Howard Hughes of India — he had his own airline, his own railway, his own currency, his own army, his own postal service, and his own fleet of Rolls-Royces. He had also had 40 wives and 21 palaces. Yet he was a miserly recluse who wrote poetry, adopted endless children and slept alone in a single cot in a small room in the King Kothi palace, surrounded by sacks of jewels.
Meanwhile, up on its hill, the Falaknuma stood empty for almost 50 years, its gardens overgrown, its lavish interiors prey to damp and termites, its doors and windows secured with sealing wax, its colonnades patrolled by dwindling bands of security guards. Nobody knew what to do with it, until the Taj hotel group took out a lease. They have spent the past 10 years and some £16m painstakingly restoring the palace to its former glory.
The Falaknuma reopens its polished doors to guests this month. All is as it was 100 years ago — the Jade drawing room, the gentlemen’s billiards room, the ballroom, the library and the nizam’s study, where the famous Jacob diamond was once used as a paperweight. One of the grand ghosts of the lost world of the nizams has been brought back to spectacular life.
Stanley Stewart travelled as a guest of Greaves Travel
Where to stay: the refurbished Falaknuma Palace (00800 4588 1825, tajhotels.com) is now one of India’s grandest hotels, with prices to match. Rooms start at an eye-watering £520 a night, although tour operators can arrange much cheaper packages. The Taj Banjara (details as above), across town, is rather more affordable, with doubles from £93 per night.
Where to eat: Hyderabad has one of India’s most distinguished cuisines. If you pale at the Falaknuma’s room rates, at least go for dinner. You can wander through the palace, then enjoy the views from the belvedere, and the two restaurants — one western, one Indian — are superb. A two-course dinner starts at £25.
Tour operators: the India specialist Greaves Travel (020 7487 9111, greavesindia.com) has four nights in Hyderabad, staying at the Taj Falaknuma Palace, from £1,475pp, including nonstop flights from Heathrow to Hyderabad with British Airways, private transfers, guided sightseeing, a car with driver and a spa treatment. Greaves can add tailor-made extensions to other destinations in India. Or try The Ultimate Travel Company (020 7386 4646, theultimatetravelcompany.co.uk), Steppes Travel (01285 880980, steppestravel.com) or Transindus (020 8566 3739, transindus.co.uk).
