The Gol Gumbaz and Ibrahim Roza, Bijapur

I did a little sightseeing in Bijapur, specifically the Gol Gumbaz and the Ibrahim Roza.

Bijapur is quite a nice little town, with a whole bunch of ruined or semi-ruined monuments scattered throughout the city. The past is definitely woven into the city, and its somewhat unique that way. The two most notable monuments are the ones mentioned above. The Gol Gumbaz is stated by Lonely Planet to be a 'massive ill-proportioned' building, but I didn't see anything ill-proportioned about it. BTW, the ICSE history book (Kundera!) had a photo and mention of it, and I remember it from there. Good old ICSE history, I actually learnt a fair amount from it, and it created in me a hankering to see all the ancient monuments that are mentioned there, which I've only been able to satisfy of late. Anyway. The notable thing about the Gumbaz is that the dome is the second largest in the world after St. Peter's Cathedral at the Vatican. Ho-hum. But its still a really nice building.
Muslim architecture in India seems to get enthu about acoustics. The Golconda fort outside Hyderabad has this amazing stuff, where somebody at the bottom of the hill can clap and someone standing only at a specific spot near the peak of the hill, can hear the clap. Somehow they engineered the acoustics to do that. I would guess it would work as a useful security measure in an emergency. The Gol Gumbaz has another acoustic trick. There is a gallery running around the dome where you can enter. Any sound in this area echoes around 10 times, very clearly. Also if you sit at diametrically opposite ends of the gallery, you can hear very low noises (like the clattering of a keychain) from one side to the other. This particular trick I've seen elsewhere, notably at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. But that doesn't take away from the overall effect of the "Whispering Gallery" which is quite an awe-inspiring place, though can get bloody noisy with screaming kids. We went in the morning so had the place to ourselves for a while.

I did a Yahoo photo album out of the Gol Gumbaz photos. They were taken by a budding photo enthusiast, Bapu, a very sweet chap and a lecturer at the college where I gave my talk. The photos are pretty good especially for someone who is just starting off. Better than most of mine :-(

The Ibrahim Roza below is another graceful monument, but not particularly much to say about it, and I didn't take many photos