Uday Raj Lawn Lucknow

... and silent staring. Praying patiently for the journey to end. I just wanted to jump in a tuk-tuk and high speed it to a hotel and I'll be in heaven.<br><br>Although with hindsight. Being sick on a travel day, although highly inconvenient is very time efficient. No thats bollocks. It was like going to work with a hangover x10 with no option of a little phone call and a cough to get you out of dodge city.<br><br>

... a night after getting the driver to trawl round the city, it had no window....I always find that weird even though thinking about it you rarely open the window with A/C....but many rooms are like that here .......<br><br>.... it was passable, but they didnt give us an AC control you had to phone down for someone to come and adjust or turn off your AC..can you believe that cos i couldnt!!! ... ridiculous!! we have ours on and off constantly, usually ...

... namaste' and we loved it. It's easy to feel sad when you see the conditions they are living in compared to our own, but if you look past the basics, you see how rich their lives are. I think their lives will always be a struggle but not in the way that we know it. Their houses are clean, they do lots of cooking and eat three meals a day. The ingredients they use are so cheap and so accessible. They all live together in family groups and everyone ...

... that it was the best place in India. Personally I was slightly underwhelmed, but perhaps I missed the point of the place. My first impressions were of a very dirty town of limited architectural interest, sloping down to a smelly and polluted river full of dead bodies and people scrubbing their armpits. As the day went on, the place grew on me, especially towards evening when it became far busier and people offered their puja to the river, which Hindus believe to be a goddess ...

... to the group, making everyone laugh. One poem in particular is worth mentioning. Unfortunately, I don't remember it word-for-word, but the last sentence went something like "Friends are like pages in a book, but YOU are my index page." Likening someone's lover to a book's "index page," is, in my opinion, not the most romantic metaphor, though it makes sense that my colleague who read this poem is a quantitative research assistant...not exactly the type to use flowery ...

... tried to convince me that love at the beginning of a marriage was actually a bad thing, and where I got my first look at a real joint-family house. After eating, we headed out to visit a friend of Pri's who lives in Agra. We stuffed a ton more sweets down (I was getting pretty sick of them by now) and promised to visit him in Agra soon. We made it back to Lucknow in time for more sweets (uhhhhhhhh) and to sleep. The 'last' day we ...

... see the logic of allowing traffic to flow by staying on their designated side of the road. Luckily, my rickshaw driver seems to value his (and my) safety, so he hangs back a bit until the mad dash has subsided a bit. Doing Laundry: One part of living in India that I didn't at all anticipate before arriving is the enormous amount of time I spend doing laundry. I wasn't sure what the laundry situation would be here, but it looks like I'll be hand-washing my own ...

... t understand their words, I could definitely tell who were the "strong personalities" in the group. I'm not sure my Hindi will improve to the point which I can completely follow and participate in a meeting in Hindi, but I do hope that in a few months from now (with the help of my yet-to-be found Hindi tutor), my language comprehension will get much better! After the second meeting ended, I had the opportunity to attend a small wedding party for a recently-married lawyer ...

... off of the train, the hot and humid air sent sweat dripping down my face, and I longed for the cool fog and mist that we had been treated to in Landour. Before we left Delhi, Anna and Sunita had given us a sheet explaining that a staff member from our NGO would meet us at the train station to take us to the apartment. We were instructed to wait by our coach for the staff member, who would be holding up a sign, or, if he didn't come, to wait for him at the UP ...

... a horrid musty smell and in fact the guy who showed me the room began spraying air freshener around the room but it still didn't change the general decor. It was late and I couldn't be asked to go anywhere else so I unpacked and went down to the small restaurant below reception but it was empty and the menu was uninspiring. So I went to find MG road which, according to Lonely Planet, had a few restaurants on it but I couldn't find it as I just couldn't get my bearings based on ...