Feb 12th Sunday

Last night I couldn't sleep because of mosquitoes attacking me. I actually had to spray myself with bug repellent. I have spent the whole time in the house today killing mosquitoes.

I went to the Salar Jung Museum. It took 4 hours to go thru the museum. Here is my thoughts on the Museum... The collection was very interesting from textiles, guns, swords, wood and ivory carvings, Paintings, and sculptures in marble and wood. The sculpture called the Lady in the Veil was out of marble but I swear it looked like she had on a silk garment. The thing I was most disappointed with was the housing and upkeep of the artifacts. The textiles had moth balls all around them and things were open to touch even though they had no touch signs. Nothing was behind air tight glass and that was a shame. This collection will continue to detoriate if they don't change how the items are stored. We are extremely fortunate in the U.S. to have grants to preserve our heritage.

They also had a special exhibit at the museum called the Nizams' Jewellery. This was separate from the rest of the museum. They had special police guarding the exhibit and you get patted down by the police twice. The police have machine guns at every point in the exhibit. The Jacob diamond was on display and it was the size of a golf ball. The jewels were absolutely beautiful. The emeralds and rubies were so clear in greens and reds in very large caret sizes. I would guess anywhere from 10- 20 carets size for many of the emeralds and diamonds.

Sorry I don't have any pictures from the museum they wouldn't allow me to bring my camera into any parts of the museum.