A day in Bhopal

Bhopal, capital of Madhya Pradesh known as the City of Lakes as its landscape is dotted with a number of natural as well as manmade lakes. We boarded Bhopal express from Nizamuddin station at 9 PM and reached Bhopal in morning at around 7. We had our accommodations booked by IndiaHotelReview.com at Hotel Lake View Ashok, situated on Shyamla Hills. The hotel over looked the Upper Lake, a man made lake that was built by Raja Bhoj, once ruler of Bhopal.

We had to attend a conference in the morning at Bharat Bhawan. Bharat Bhawan is one of the most unique national institutes in India known for the performing and visual arts. The Bhawan has a museum of the arts, an art gallery, a workshop for fine arts, a reparatory theatre, indoor and outdoor auditorium, rehearsal room, and libraries of Indian poetry, classical and folk music. And the best part is its location. After the conference we just thought of relaxing at the banks of Upper Lake. You can clearly hear the sound of each & every wave crashing at our feet. It was so relaxing after almost half a day of presentations & some regular lectures.

It is believed that the Bhopal Lake was built by late Parmar King Bhoj approximately a thousand years ago and now is known as Upper Lake. The Upper lake is divided from the Lower by an over bridge and is six sq. km. in area. There are facilities for exciting trips by sail, paddle, and motor-boats.

After lunch at the Hotel, we called our cab driver who was also booked through www.indiahotelreview.com so that we can go for sight seeing around the city. Bhopal is a small city and can be easily covered in a day but we wanted to explore the 11th century city Bhojpal which was founded by Raja Bhoj. But the present Bhopal city was established by an Afghan soldier, Dost Mohammed whose descendants build Bhopal into a beautiful city.

We started with Taj ul Masjid. This is the largest mosque in the country. The most imposing features of the mosque are its main hall with inter-arched roof, broad facade, spacious courtyard, and smooth marble flooring. It is also said to have the tallest minarets in Asia. Then we went to see the Birla Mandir. It is so beautiful. After the Mandir our driver took us to Jama Masjid situated at the centre of Chowk Bazar, a busy business centre of Bhopal. This Masjid was completed in 24 years. It is said that to built this Masjid, an amount of Rs. 60.5 lakhs was spent way back in 1837.

It was dusk when we decided to return back. On our way back to hotel we decided to visit Nariman point of Bhopal. It is a huge bridge built on the upper lake connecting old city to Bairagarh, where airport is located.
Instead of having dinner at the hotel, we decided to try some local delicacies and the person to guide us was our cab driver. Finally we reached old Bhopal a heaven for non vegetarians. The driver told us that the bye lanes at the inner city Chowk offers some of the best curries and kebabs in Bhopal.

I had read some where that “The Muslim cuisine of Bhopal is distinctive from its fellow cuisines in other parts of India and its master chefs are much in demand.” The driver took us to Karims corner. We were a bit confused as what to order but our driver asked the waiter to serve us with the best of his restaurant. Our driver asked us to give him a call when we’ll be through with our dinner and left. While going out he went to the person sitting on the billing desk, pointed towards us and told him “ki memsaam loog dilli se aaye hai ache se khilana.” The waiter came to us to ask weather we are veg or non veg. As we told him non vegetarians he said loudly char-grilled kebabs on table no. 7. Before we could finish with the kebabs the steaming plates of biryani with rich curries were served. After that we don’t know what all we ate. We tasted so many things.

We had our plans chalked out for the morning starting from the sunrise. So we headed straight to our rooms to do what we are best at…sleeping.

We had our morning tea with breath-taking sunrise at the upper lake as the backdrop. We wanted to stay there more but had to catch our bus at 11 for Bhojpur – Bhimbetka. The journey was worth as we travelled from pre historic age to medieval lakes to present day Bhopal. Bhopal is a fast catching city on the urban culture. One think that I noticed in Bhopal was that number of women driving two wheelers was more than the men and on the same hand there were Burka Clad girls studying in madarsaa.

In total it was an over whelming response that we got. This city knows how to welcome the guest and literally justifies this saying “Atithi devo Bhava”