Hyderabad from a height

There, somewhere to the north, is your house&rdquo Capt. Anwar Rehman&rsquos voice crackled over the headphones. I narrowed my eyes and scanned hopefully, but it was impossible to distinguish one white-painted home in the dense cluster of urban settlement, now looking rather toy-sized. I was belted into a Cessna 152, a small two-seater airplane my purpose, an aerial tour of Hyderabad.

We had just taken off from Begumpet airport and at once I saw long columns of blue corrugated roofing &mdash Secunderabad Station, where I had been only the previous day. We veered over a green body of water. From the air, Hussain Sagar revealed large masses of shadowy algae and a rather lonesome-seeming Buddha. We covered ground rapidly in a few minutes, we had come upon the Old City &mdash the traverse by road usually takes an hour. There was the lofty High Court, and the Musi trickling under the Naya and Purana Puls. I sat up and pressed my nose to the glass window &mdash the iconic Charminar was only a very short distance away. We swooped around in a circle and there it was, serene for all the bustle around it. I had seen it scores of times, shopped in its environs, seen it used splendidly in movies I remember a particularly romantic glimpse of the four minarets by the light of a swelling moon&hellip But this was a very special look at the Charminar, and I felt a whoosh of affection for the monument.

Still, this was no time to be looking at just one thing the Old City is chock-a-block with heritage. The venerated Mecca Masjid wore an air of spiritual calm, then I spied the beautiful lines of the Chowmohalla Palace and, a considerable distance away, the glorious Falaknuma Palace. This palace sits on a hill of its own and its perch explains its name &mdash a view of the skies. To see it from the &lsquofalak&rsquo brought on a shiver. We were looping back. A large swathe of rectangular ground caught my eye buildings stood all around it. This was Purani Haveli, the magnificent residence of the Nizams.

More recent landmarks were to be seen now. Here the marble-white Birla Mandir, on its own hill there an interesting-looking building, which I discovered to be the Ritz, once a haveli, then a celebrated hotel and now fallen into disuse. An unfamiliar perspective of very familiar places brought several discoveries. The knobby contours of my city, the veins of a nearly dry river, large stretches of rock that have been left alone as inhospitable tracts, cricket grounds teeming with game-mad kids, the new flyovers that sweep all along in anonymous efficiency, the surprising green patches, and the laid-out stateliness of the Public Gardens.

The information
For the aerial tour of Hyderabad, flights are conducted from Begumpet Airport.
Contact Hyderabad on Wings, 9348533939. Shop around for online deals that may offer a discount on sites such as Groupon&nbspand Indiamart.