Mohammed Takes You Up the Mountain

Sunday. 10:00. It's hopping at Golconda Fort, India's second largest. And everyone's here--the families on a day trip, Aunt Bess's cow, and three-fingered Jack, the guy who cuts the coconuts open with a machete and hands you one with a straw. Tickets are 5 Rs for Indians, and 100 Rs for foreigners. We call it the white people tax.

Anyway, Pradeep, Joe and I hired a guide, Mohammed, which was a good call. There's so many hidden aspects to this place you'd miss them without someone in the know. For instance, the way the main gate is designed, it's impossible for it to be charged by an elephant. Meanwhile, the boiling oil flows out of an opening three stories up and archers pelt you from behind. Inside the gate, the acoustic design allows someone to clap and be heard from a specific location 500 feet up and half a kilometer away. It works. We tried it at both ends.

And it is 500 feet to the top, up a winding and uneven staircase that twists around cisterns and granaries and ramparts. A lot of diamonds were found here--including the one in the British crown--which is how they funded it and why they needed to defend it.

The way down is even worse, at least for me. Steep, narrow stairs that I had to take one at a time, right leg first (my left leg did all the work and I'm so sore I'm considering a massage, something I never do).

Anyway, Mohammed was great. For 750 Rs ($12) he provided a three hour tour including the gem room, the makeup room (paleosephora), and the bat cave. Yes, there is a bat cave, and there are about 10,000 bats. Photography included in the cost.

Pradeep took us to a great Indian buffet afterwards, featuring one of my favorite things: Keema Pao. Imagine a slider-sized sloppy joe. Now replace the beef and Manwich sauce with ground lamb cooked on the plancha, 3-alarm chili oil, and some green onions. I swear there is a market for these in the US; it'd be like White Castle and you could get a bag of six for three dollars with a mango lassi on the side. Anyway, I was enjoying the food so much I barely noticed the awful acoustic 80s cover band playing lullaby-Clapton and folksy-Michael Jackson. Until the purple dinosaur walked by, that is.