The Lonely Planetarians and The Model of Lucknow

Trains in India are as crazy and complicated as the rest of the country. They are immensely long (20 carriages plus), and have five or more different classes. In brief, there’s AC1, AC2 and AC3 (air conditioned, 1 being the nicest and 3 being the not so nicest), then there’s sleeper class (no AC, even less niceness), and unreserved seating (mayhem). The reason I mention the trains is that from Varanasi to Lucknow we travelled in sleeper class, and it was quite an ordeal.

Sleeper class is how your average Indian person travels, with the AC carriages being more for the middle and upper classes. From Agra to Varanasi we travelled in AC3 and it was fine, if not a little cramped, so going straight into sleeper class was quite a shock to the system!

Our beds were right next to the toilet, so it stank of urine and there were puddles of dirty, pissy water under the beds. We saw rats running around the floor, and it was very noisy, with one considerate passenger playing the same song on his phone over and over again. The biggest problem though was the overcrowding, as sleeper class is sold out twice over, in order to accommodate the tremendous Indian population. This meant that whilst we were stretched out in our berths trying to get some sleep, random men with no reserved seat would come and sit at the end of the bed, very unnerving!! This was mostly a problem for Ric who was unlucky enough to get a bottom berth and had to spend the entire seven hours on the train fighting off strangers trying to share his bed, and also keeping the guys from getting into bed with me and Anna – what a hero! Eventually, Ric lost his seat completely when he went to the toilet and came back to find one fat Indian man sitting on top of all his things, unwilling to move. Needless to say it wasn’t the most enjoyable train ride for any of us, and if we do brave sleeper class again we’ll be getting top level bunks, and some pepper spray!!

Lucknow isn’t on most backpacker’s agenda and it was a refreshing change to feel like we were the only tourists in town. For some reason though we did find Lucknow to be more expensive than other places we’ve been.

Lucknow is famous for its rich food and tasty meat dishes, so a large part of our fours days there revolved around eating. We took some recommendations from a guy we met eating Chinese food at a road side café, and also followed most of the recommendations in Anna’s Lonely Planet. Usually none of us are the kind to walk around, nose in a guide book, following every step down to the letter, but… partly by coincidence and partly for the fun of it, we decided to go to all of the places recommended by the guide: We became… The Lonely Planetarians! Being the Lonely Planetarians led to us eat some great food, in some fine establishments, which were all conveniently located in Hazarat Ganj, the posh part of town where the buildings have a very European feel. Among the culinary highlights were: the best chicken massala I've ever tried, melt in the mouth kebabs, basket chat (a potato basket filled with all sorts of sweet and savoury delights), and bright red tandori chicken fresh from the oven.

Basket Chat: potatoes, pakoras, crisps, pomergranite, yoghurt and all manner of unidentifiable eatables.

When we weren’t eating we did manage to visit some sights: Bara Imambara and Chota Imambara (big tomb and little tomb), which were palatial buildings surrounded by gardens and mosques. In Bara Imambara we were able to climb into the labyrinth of passage ways in the ceiling and climb up onto the roof to get a decent view of Lucknow.

In the labrinth at Bara Imambara

We weaved our way through the streets of Chowk where ladies’ chickan suits are made. Everybody kept telling us about chickan, not to be confused with chicken; it basically refers to custom-made, hand-embroided clothes. First you chose your material and have it tailored to fit you perfectly, next you chose your pattern and a man prints it in ink onto the material. Then you take the printed material to another shop where it is embroided, then another shop where the collar and cuffs are decorated with the hem of your choice. The whole process costs less than £10. The outfits were lovely and I was tempted to buy one, but in the end I stuck to the tastier type of chicken!

Chota Imambara

On our final day in Lucknow we spent part of the day with a girl who introduced herself as ‘The Model of Lucknow’. Her actually name was Apurva and she volunteered herself to show us around the Residency. The Residency was built by the extravagant Nawab settlers and later inhabited by the British. During the First War of Independence the Residency was held under siege for several weeks and is now left as ruins, with cannon ball holes visible in many of the remaining walls. Apurva gave us a “tour” with some questionable facts and then led us to see the river. I’m pretty sure a large portion of what she told us that morning was fictional, however she was certainly an interesting character and it was very kind of her to offer to show us around her city.

Mosque among the ruins at Residency, Lucknow.

The three of us with the Model of Lucknow.

After many, many iced coffees and lavish meals in Lucknow we said farewell to Anna and left for New Delhi in time for our flight to Nepal. Getting off the train at New Delhi station felt oddly like coming home and it was uplifting to be somewhere familiar (we even stayed in the same hotel).

We spent a day and a half in Delhi, chilling out and doing some light sight seeing. I indulged Ric and joined him at the National Railway Museum, acting as his photographer for the day whilst he climbed and posed on various decrepit engines. (He had certainly earned it after sitting around in various shops while me and Anna tried on sarees!) We also went to Qutub Minar, a 238ft minaret and ancient mosque built by the Mughal emperors.

Choo Choo!

Qutub Minar

Everyday in Indian dozens of Indians what to take photos of us. Those who ask politely usually succeed in getting a photo, but those who try to candidly take our picture, or worse, those who shove a camera in our faces and click away without shame nor grace, are often privy to my wrath. This was the case at Qutub Minar, where a group of men relentlessly tried to take our photo, without success, and then finally came over and asked us to pose. Now if you’re wondering why it makes me so angry when people try to photograph us then allow me to explain: firstly it’s a violation of our privacy and it’s extremely annoying when we’re trying to enjoy some beautiful tourist attraction that we’ve paid to see; secondly I don’t want every Tom, Dick and Harry with a photo on his phone showing all his mates the photo of the white girl he saw and telling them all manner of lies about what type of encounter we had, indeed we have met Indian men who have showed us photos of European girls claiming that they’re their girlfriends. Unlikely! So at Qutub Minar I got a little bit angry at the paparazzi and ended up insisting they pay us money to take our photo, and they did! I’m now planning to finance the rest of our trip on the profits made from posing for Indian people’s photos.