On Monday night it was off to Lucknow on the overnight train again in 3AC class - this is all too easy! Got off at 7am Tuesday to find the usual thousands of eager auto-rickshaw drivers wanting to take us to their favourite hotel (where they get commission). Walked to the Hotel Paradise. The room was a bit of a box with no windows, but cheap enough. I hope the real paradise is a few steps up from this.
The restaurant down the road was very popular for breakfast, so we dived in and had the Indian-style stuff, paneer paratha and chai. We have even started drinking the local water at the restaurants - other people are doing it and they are not dead yet. Jenny found a Cafe Coffee Day chain outlet in the middle of town - these are good for an escape point and make a wonderful cold coffee with cream and ice-cream. Next door was Universal Booksellers. This has western-style books - everything from Harry Potter, Jane Austen, high school texts to university Maths, Physics and Microsoft Certification. I couldn't resist and bought a small "Introduction to Special Relativity" for Rs162 ($A5). This makes good reading when stuck on a local bus for hours, and you can be pretty sure that no-one will be reading over your shoulder.
Went to the Lucknow Zoo and saw Emus - why didn't I just stay in Oz? There was also a penguin bin the same as the ones on Malabar Hill in Mumbai - maybe these are Himalayan penguins that have migrated south?
We got into the swing of using pedal rickshaws here - Phil wants to tell the guy to sit at the back and let him have a go, but I think we might get run down.
Spent a few hours trying to buy rope (to ensure we can tie the packs onto bus roofracks if needed). "rope" proved to be a word that no-one understood. Eventually we found a guy in a clothing shop who understood, bought us some chai, chatted with us, tried to sell Jenny some more clothes and wrote down some Hindi for "rope". He pointed us in the direction of a hardware shop. Sure enough, there was rope out the front. We didn't need to talk as pointing was good enough at this stage.
We went to the Mini-Mahal for dinner. It was as good as the LP book said - the serving sizes were large and we had the Kulfi Faluda for dessert. This is ice-cream (2 interesting flavours) with noodles (the rice-cake sort) in green and orange. It was great. If you are passing through Lucknow then go to the Mini-Mahal on Mahatma Gandhi Marg near the middle of town.
