Travelogues

A Day in the City of Kebabs: Lucknow

All right! What do you do when your friends say that we have to attend a page 3 wedding reception in the City of Nawabs? Well… You say “Sure, Why not?” and hitch along for the ride. And that is exactly what I did when my friends asked me this question. My friends P, R, & S.

The plan was made and the arrangements were final; the only thing left was booking our tickets! That I think was the trickiest of the lot. With the three of us working on reservations simultaneously and checking and cross checking information on the IRCTC website, trouble was just around the corner. And if you’ve heard of the old adage “Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth” well in this case it fit us to a T.

When we finally managed to confirm our seats we realized that two of us were seated together and the third one (yours truly) was in a different coach. What can we say except that all’s well that ends well? We all made it to Lucknow together, with a little help from the TC ;) if you get what I mean…

Got to the New Delhi Railway station; boarded my train (Swarn Shatabdi) at 6:00 a.m.; my friends boarded from Ghaziabad (was closer for them) at 6:35 a.m.; had a word with the TC; all us of seated together, finally! The short version.

Once seated, we chatted non-stop on our way to Lucknow. Felt like smoking & we realized that none of us were carrying a smoke so we waited patiently for the next stop (Kanpur) where we hoped the train would have a stop long enough for us to run outside and grab a couple of smokes. But then I’m sure you’ve also heard of “when something has to go wrong, it will”. Imagine we are at the next stop but the train only stopped there for two minutes!!! What happened next was a stroke of pure luck. One of us decided to walk up to a complete stranger who was smoking and bummed a cigarette off him. The nice guy that he was, he understood our plight and gave us one. Thanks Stranger, appreciate your support!

Traveling in an air conditioned chair car you can’t really say what the weather is like outside so when we finally touched base we realized the weather outside was way too hot to handle. Man, this was in March, don’t know what it’s like now! Best time to travel to Lucknow would be Sept – Feb when the weather gods are kinder. I’ve heard the city hosts a 10 day winter festival in the last week of November which runs in to the first week December. My next trip to the city would be during that time.

Waiting for our other friend S who had promised to receive us at the station since he arrived there a day earlier, we were on our way towards the exit. There’s something about local taxiwalas and rickshaw-walas outside the station. They are able to pinpoint with guided missile-like accuracy whether you are tourist or not. Don’t know how they do it but sure would like to learn a thing or two about this art from them. We were swamped with offers for cheap hotels,