Luck-Never

Lucknow? Whoever named this city? After our calm and restorative 4 days in Amritsar, we embarked on our first 1AC (first class) night train to Lucknow. A total of 16 hours, 2 strange men, a late-night whiskey drinking and card-playing cabin next to us, many a nighttime stop, and several chai later we arrived in Lucknow to be received by another friend of a friend, Shakeel. We were still unclear as to why we had really decided to come to Lucknow and that uncertainty became ever clearer upon our arrival to the hotel picked out for us by our chaperon, Shakeel. A man hotel! A dirty, filthy Indian man hotel in which we were the only women and the toilet had most certainly not been cleaned in a man year! The beds in India, I may have mentioned, are hard, but this hotel manged to break a record: not only was it hard it was stuffed with straw, simulating a manger scene. As it goes, it seems we arrive to each new spot with great expectations only to have them completely obliterated. And so, as with many of our entries into Indian cities, we immediately locked ourselves into our room to recompose ourselves. After a dirty night train we had been hoping to shower and change our clothes, but the bathroom presented such a daunting option that we simply opted for a change of clothes and some watered down chai. After our few moments of re-composure, we went back out into this god-forsaken city to figure out why we had come in the first place. We had heard rumors that Lucknow, while not frequently visited by travelers, was a hub of local embroidery and silk textile products. Therefore, we set out into the extremely hot, dusty, and crowded local bazaar to find ourselves some items for the trunk. After about an hour of hawking and finding nothing, we escaped the watchful eye of our chaperon and fled into the very Western arms of the Barista cafe. This was our first time that we had willingly fled into the most Western looking place around and we were not disappointed: such amazing cappuccinos! But, I digress. As the sun set we realized that we had nothing to do and nowhere to go but back to the dreaded man hotel. Lucknow has no bars (expect those which cater only towards men and while women are allowed inside they are met with incessant staring that makes even the most secure woman run), restaurants (as all eat in their homes), or cafes (apart from the Barista) so we inquired as to where we could find the local English Wine and Beer shop. Upon finally finding it, I pushed my way to the front (naturally, I was the only woman), checked that all seals were intact (if you recall my last bout with fraudulent beer purchases), bought 3 bottles of Kingfisher Strong, hailed (and bartered with) a cycle-rickshaw to take us back into the slums which led to the man hotel. We then found ourselves in the room at 6pm with no English television stations and so we tuned into the local Hindu God soap-opera (which you can find a bit of on our facebook pages) and dubbed it ourselves. This little bit of hilarity and the beer got us through the evening. Not that we slept of course, naturally the alley neighbors were having a large party lasting well into the wee hours of the night.

Now, we come to the way in which Lucknow becomes 'Luck-maybe'. Lucknow's only saving grace was that the previous day I happened to spot a tiny little sign in English announcing that the Lucknow Arts and Crafts Fair was to open the following day. Therefore, we headed there first thing in the morning. Fortunately, we were not too-terribly disappointed: live, traditional music and dancing, Lucknowi foods (oh and speaking of Lucknowi foods we had perhaps the most dreadful dessert of our entire travels: Kulfi. Kulfi is a slightly sweetened milk ice cream pounded with pistachios and raisins, steeped in rose water, and then served in a bowl covered with slimy, cold glass noodles. As this was presented to us by our friend we were forced to eat it all so as not to offend, but this is a dessert one must grow up with to enjoy), and beautiful crafts were all on offer. We found some beautiful scarves and folk art pieces for the trunk: while none of our purchases hailed from Lucknow, we were at least able to leave the city with a few new objects in tow. We were finished with the fest by noon and still had 9 hours to kill before our next 1AC night train, so back to the Barista. Lucknow? Luckmaybe? Lucknever.

After the man hotel, the night train presented a welcome place to rest our heads, that is until we met our cabin mate: a chatty colonel in the Indian army who snored like no one and nothing we had ever before experienced. Over and above the train sounds, this snorkeler kept us awake all night. We arrived into Varanasi (the holiest of cities for Hindus, where the devout go to die) at 5.30 am with high hopes of our hotel. More on Varanasi, where the travails most certainly outweighed the pleasures of this ancient city along the holy Mother Ganga to come soon.