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| Viewing place |
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| Viewing tower |
The other lake nearby called Himayath Sagar is named after his son Azam Jah or Himayath Ali Khan. Anyway I had been to one of the Osman Sagar walks before but I was curious about the unseen parts as I always am, and went.
Sibgat gave a bit of history about the lake - how the Musi began at some spots near Vikarabad (he should know, he's written a book on the Musi), flowed some 70 kms till it reached this place and onwards to Hyderabad, how it was temperamental enough for people to be scared to build around it, extreme floods and then dry as a bone in summer, until the devastating 1908 floods which claimed some 15000 lives and washed away half of Hyderabad.
It was during the seventh Nizam's time that Sir Mokshagundam Visweswarayya (also there first Bharat Ratna, Sibgat as slips in little tidbits like these) was hired to provide a solution to the capricious river and its extreme flooding and complete dry summers, and he provided a simple solution, a barrage.
We walked to the view point near the lake, where he spoke about the Musi Valley which was quite lush and which he said offered scope for paddy cultivation causing many affluent farmers from Andhra to move along the Musi. The Musi joins the Krishna at Wazirabad.
Interestingly he said that the Musi is older than the Himalayan rivers, and was perhaps gurgling along even during the times of dinosaurs. No wonder it's grumpy.
Musi has a tributary called Esa or Esi, both being named after Prophets, on which Himayat Sagar is dammed. The two join and flow merrily along.
From the sheet rock, which he lamented was also being turned to powder thanks to development, we looked down at the Gandi Maisamma temple which is why the village is named Gandipet. A distant view of the Golconda and we started a long trek back towards the village and then into the temple premises.
Along the way we stopped at the Dak Bungalow, so named during the British times as a bungalow that had a postal address. Many government buildings this became Dak bungalows. Now the Dak Bungalow is in the hands of some very wary water works people who were worried about going viral and asked us not to take pictures and so on.
A little further and we saw an old milestone that showed the way to Hyderabad and to Osman Sagar and the Deccan Archives people were thoughtful enough to give us all key chains modelled in the ancient milestone.
Right there we spotted a building with the name Rustomfram and I remembered the famous Rustomfram Bar in Koti. Must be the same people.
We turned off the main road and headed into the temple premises. Being a Sunday many devotees were arriving with goats and chickens to sacrifice. The Gandi Maisamma temple's deity protects the bund of the lake from breaking. It was constructed around the same period just as Masjid e Osman close by for workers in the lake and the bund - 1920.
Beyond the temple was the actual unseen part - an aqueduct of those times that carried water to the city. Apparently water from Gandipet was considered good for the gut so the privileged sections saw to it that they got it for themselves. The aqueduct is broken in places but we walked on it till as far as we could and returned. Not easy to find it unless you know where it is. Even now it apparently carries water to some of treatment plant that he mentioned. Other interesting sights included a public toilet which was nicely locked up, an interesting stone, the aqueduct itself.
Large group. Very hot. It was a tough walk back. But like always, lots of interesting information, just enough and not too much, lovely people, great fun.
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