Bidar travel guide

The scruffy bungalow town that is modern day Bidar spreads out in a thin layer of buildings both within and without the imposing rust-red walls of the 15th-century fort that once played capital to two Deccan-ruling Muslim dynasties. The buildings may be new but there’s still something of a medieval undercurrent to life here. Islam still grows sturdily: apart from the storehouses of government-subsidized industries to counter ‘backwardness’, the outskirts are littered with long white prayer walls to mop up the human overflow from over-burdened mosques during Id. A few lone tiles, tucked into high corners, still cling to the laterite brick structures that stand in for the succession of immaculately made palaces which must once have glowed incandescent with bright blue, green and yellow designs. Elsewhere you can only see the outline of the designs. The old fort commands grand vistas across the empty cultivated land below. Each successive palace was ruined by invasions then built anew a little further east.