Lucknow

We left Varanasi behind and have both vowed never to return. The road to Lucknow was reasonable and quite a bit of it was backtracking where we’d come from on Friday. The road did narrow considerably after we took the Lucknow turnoff though. It seemed like we were never going to get there and it still baffles me how it can take a full days driving to only cover 300 kilometres.

The last ten or twelve kilometres took us an hour as traffic became heavy from the outskirts of Lucknow. We were led to believe we would be walking the last few hundred metres to the hotel because of the difficulty gaining access with the bus on the narrow suburban streets where it is located. Mr Singh and the driver of bus 1 had other ideas though. Bus 1 ploughed and pruned his way through the low hanging tree branches and Mr Singh followed in the wake! Mr Singh used his extra loud horn every time Bus 1 became entangled in the overhead wires. Chorty, our assistant driver would fly out of our bus and scale the back of bus 1 like a monkey with his trusty cricket bat in hand to deal with the offending cables. I’m not sure what surprised me the most; the fact that we weren’t all fried in the bus or that power and internet was still available when we did reach the hotel!

For the first time in over two weeks, we had a choice of meals other than Indian food. We flocked to that Italian restaurant at the hotel like bees to a honey pot!

Monday morning we didn’t need to be on the bus until 9:00am so we all took plenty of time over our breakfasts. Once we did hit the road, it was to do a Mosque run. There are a couple of pretty impressive ones here with one built in the mid-19^th century as a miniature replica of the Taj Mahal.

Bus number 2, complete with driver, assistant and guide at the Imam Bargah.

Our guide Vivek with Mr Singh and Chorty.

A Mosque in the form of a mini Taj Mahal.

Muslim Turner

Lucknow, is the capital of Uttar Pradesh State and appears to be a bit more organised than most of the big cities that we’ve been to in the last fortnight. There are some traffic lights and cows are kept out of the city centre. They must still sneak in from time to time though as there is still plenty of cow dung about. There are also lots of horse drawn carts ready to take locals where they need to be or tourists to the sights around town.

Peanuts. Just like the guy at the footy years ago. (Not)

Tomorrow we have a lazy day. The pool is bound to get a work out as we enjoy our first RDO of the trip. We don’t board the train back to Delhi until mid-afternoon and that should deliver us there by midnight. Wednesday morning we fly down to Goa for a bit of sun, golf and seafood.

The next blog posting won’t be until we’ve experienced a bit of what Goa has to offer.

Cheers again.

What we can expect tomorrow heading back to Delhi.