Thursday night some of the folks in the team took me for a tour and dinner at Falaknama Palace. Falaknama is one of the most amazing historic things I've seen. To set the stage a bit, this palace was completed in 1893 by the Prime Minister of Hyderabad, who was the brother-in-law of the 6th Nizam King. When the palace was completed and the Prime Minister was broke, he asked his brother-in-law for a favor, namely buying the palace from him for 2,000,000 rupees. Think about the kind of money involved here when that's 1897 money. In 2019, 2M rupees is worth around $28k USD. If you take inflation in to account, that's around $61,000,000 US dollars.
According to our guide, with the great number of palaces the king already had, he wasn't too interested in buying a new palace, but he nevertheless helped out his brother-in-law, primarily using the palace to house visiting royal guests and his army of concubines - once apparently numbering around 1000 with him having close to 2000 kids.
I've been to a couple other Nizam palaces, like Chowmahalla Palace, back in 2012, which was also very impressive, but Chowmahalla has a very different vibe than Falaknama. A few things that stand out about Falaknama:
1. Location / View:
You have to understand that Hitech City, the area that Qualcomm is in, is a brand new high tech park. 15 years ago it was all farmland. Now it's wide, generally straight streets; metro lines; tall buildings; and fast paced life. Falaknama is in the old part of Hyderabad. An area where a lot of Muslims live. Streets go in circles, many are tight little alleyways. When you go to this area, you see people who are pretty much living the same way their ancestors did 100s of years ago.
For us, that meant that the drive to the palace was a wild one. No one knew exactly how to get there. One of us had Google maps going, the other had Apple. Each gave it's own ideas on the right way to get there. Some of them turned out to be entirely wrong, such as this street we were routed to:
Falaknama is on a hill overlooking the old city. The view below is the opposite angle from the photo above. It was taken from the top story of the palace, looking down on the old city.
Seeing this view, you can start to imagine how if you were the Nizam king, you could stand on the balcony looking through your binoculars and watch what was happening with your people. The Nizams were well known for their building projects for the city of Hyderabad. Things like medical schools, court buildings, hospitals, universities, etc. So, the king could literally stand here and watch his world growing up around him.
2. Guests:
The king hosted many foreign monarchs at Falaknama, including King George V, King Edward VIII (his son), and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Of late, Shweta and I have become a little fascinated with reading about Queen Victoria, her grandchildren like George, Nicholas, and Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. The disaster that these cousins managed to create with their handling of the diplomacy leading up to World War 1 is a sad, sometimes shocking debacle. If you're interested in some reading on the subject, Ken Follett's Fall of Giants, while long is very good.
So, to walk in to the front entrance of the palace and see giant paintings of some of these guests is very cool. To think that they were there, walking the same halls brings something romantic to the experience.
3. Layout:
Like Chowmahalla, Falaknama isn't more than it needs to be. The main palace building has a 100 person dining hall, with one large table. There's a small ballroom adjacent to the dining hall. It's got a men's lounge equipped with the original 12.5 foot billiards table, chess boards, playing card tables and a bar. The ladies can congregate in the ladies gossip room. There's a very large drawing room where you can relax and read a book. Finally, there are some bed rooms for VIP guests and the king's family. Guest rooms then spread out around the inner courtyard. I get it, it's a palace, so it's overstated, but it somehow keeps the feel that if you lived there, it would still feel like a home.
Here's Chandana, Surekha and I in the courtyard.
4. Restoration / Hotel:
The Taj Hotel Group, which operates 5 star hotels all over India, has leased Falaknama palace from the Nizam foundation. They then undertook a massive 10 year restoration of the entire hotel complex. They've done an amazing job of making the palace be what it was back in the early 1900s. For example, the gent's lounge is exactly as it was back then. You can walk up to the bar and order a drink. You can sit in the drawing room and read a book. Note that you've got to be willing to pay big money to do so. The smallest room goes for around $450 US per night. The VIP suites are $11,000 a night.
Bottom line is that if you've got the money and you want to go back in time to live like a king, you can literally do it here at Falaknama.
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Here are some more photos of our group that evening. After taking the tour, we headed to the restaurant for an amazing dinner and a lot of great conversation:
(Surekha, Vishwa, Ganesh, Chandana, and me)
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