My duty takes me to Hyderabad and Golconda Fort

As I have mentioned earlier, HAL Nashik Division was receiving supplies of accessories from sister divisions of HAL and, while Lucknow and Korwa supplied mechanical accessories and specific avionics items, Hyderabad was responsible to supply avionics items.
The supplies were smooth and regular and there was hardly any reason to complain but, problems arose when certain spares were not forthcoming from American suppliers. One may question why Americans should supply items for a Russian aircraft. The reason was that the Indian Air Force had replaced certain avionics items of Russian origin with items of American items and, there were disruption in supplies due to political considerations.

The US had imposed sanctions on defense supplies to India as a result of the Pokhran II nuclear test in 1998, hence I was asked to proceed to Hyderabad to get a first-hand picture.
Accordingly, I left by the Kacheguda Express from Manmad – the train left at 5.30pm and next morning by 9am, I was at Hyderabad. I took a cab to the HAL Guest House and checked in – I met a couple of officers and got the general briefing on the problems and efforts being made by Hyderabad to tackle the problems.
I had some more meetings the next day and in the evening, I went to the office of the Andhra Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation APTDC and booked a sightseeing tour. The bus left by 9am and I had to hire an auto rickshaw to reach the pickup point in time. Of course, I had some time on hand and had a sumptuous breakfast of super-size idi-wada sambhar.
The tour was a good one – it covered all important tourist attractions of Hyderabad like the Husseinsagar Lake with the huge stone statue of Buddha in the middle, Salar Jung museum with the man who came out of his cell to strike the hour, and Golconda Fort which was a marvel of engineering. The tour ended by 5.30pm and I returned back to the Guest House. (to be continued …)
(Image courtesy wikimediacommoms.org)

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