Saturday - Golkanda Fort

I'm sorry that I'm posting out of order. I hope it still makes a certain amount of sense.

Saturday, I started going stir crazy. Vindya and I had been together without a break for way, way too long. She was very clingy, which I understand to be a normal part of the process, but it was driving me crazy. I finally sat her down and had a talk with her. "Kid, it has been a week now since you left everyone and everything you know. You need to stop dwelling on the past and get over it. Most importantly, you need to give me space. If I don't have at least a little room to myself, one of us isn't going to survive this adventure." This worked about as well as you might have expected, and I decided that it was in our best interest to get out of the hotel.

I made arrnagments to take the documentary maker from the sisuvihar up on his offer to show us the countryside on Sunday, and I arranged for us to go to Golkanda Fort for the light and sound show on Saturday evening.

Golkanda fort is a huge complex on a hill outside of town. For about 800 years, it was the stronghold/palace of the various dynasties who ruled this part of India. The ruins are monumental. Huge rocks, walls built onto cliffs, secret tunnels over 8 km long, gorgeous carvings in the stone archways stading around ruined garden courtyards - it's truly breathtaking.

We got snagged by a guide as soon as we got out of the car. I always forget in the heat of the moment that you can negotiate with these people, so I agreed to 350 rupees (about $7.50), which was probably about 5 times too much. We also ended up paying 100 rupees for an executive admission (Vindya was free), although this turned out to be worth it. The guide spoke English well enough to explain the basics.

The really interesting thing about the fort is the amazing acoustics. Clapping at the front gate can be heard at the main tower, 500 feet up and several layers of walls and gates away. Sound travels from point to point within the complex as well, allowing messages to be sent quickly from location to location. This is done with a very clever series of arches and shaped stones in the ceilings. I was really amazed and impressed.

The sound and light show is outside, in one of the lower courtyards of what was at one time the royal palace. My executive ticket got us seats on a raised platform, with bottled water for me and apple joice for Vindya. We got there about 15 minutes before the show, and Vindya was very happy to sit quietly and watch the crowd. (LiJun would have been bored, jumpy and miserable, poor baby.) The show itself was basically a radio play of the history of the fort from ancient times to the present, with colored lights showing the various scenes of action on the ruins. It was well done and entertaining, I thought, but then I tend to be interested in history.

It was a very pleasant evening, and Vindya and I both enjoyed it, and I felt much less stir crazy when it was time for bed.