ISM/Sangam

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Map: The HRI is actually in Jhusi, down the long winding road that almost reaches the river. From near the institute you can take a boat upstream towards the confluence (Sangam).

About a week after I arrived at HRI there was a strings conference, the Indian String meeting, which gave me a chance to hear what people here were up to, as well as to give a talk myself. It also meant the visit of Costis who I know from his Queen Mary days, as he is an India veteran having been working in Mumbai for a year now.

Along with Ted, an American post-doc here for two years, and some Indian PhD students we set off one evening to the mythical Hasty and Tasty, a bar-restaurant of ill-repute. The Indian's wanted to tag along with us, but weren't so keen to go to Hasty, as it serves beer and so is considered a bit dodgy (as a consequence of having alcohol there no women there ever!). I actually enjoyed the atmosphere: it had dim lighting and felt like a bar, not a restaurant, unlike anywhere else I'd been here. The beer here comes in 750 ml bottles, many varieties are strong, but the labels says "under 8%" as the brewing process seems a bit random here. My favourite here is Haywards, which fits into the okay as long as it's cold category. Kingfisher is also popular but tastes like cats piss. They also have Indian brewed Fosters. They all are slightly more chemical than they should be. To get to Hasty is a bumpy 20-30min bus ride into town on the free institute minibus.

Later in the week we also got the campus guest house to get us some beer, even on the HRI campus it's considered dodgy and we weren't allowed to drink them on the veranda, instead we had to skulk off to Costis's room in the guest house feeling unclean.

At the end of the week when the conference finished Costis, some of the Indian students and I went on a boat trip from the bank of the Ganges near the institute (you can see the Ganges from my office window and it's a few minutes walk down the road) to the "Sangam". This is the confluence of the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers (along with the mythical underground Saraswati river). Here we could just about see the differing colours where the rivers meet. It's a holy place for Hindus and many bathe in the (very skanky) water nearby. It was a strange boat trip as we spent most of it being pulled by a man walking in the river in front of us, or on the bank beside us (though the river was wide and relatively shallow, the current was too strong for them to do much rowing against. I enjoyed the trip as I generally like being on boats and by water, the Sangam was quite underwhelming really though.

The pictures here are: being pulled up the Ganges with Allahabad fort in the background, On the boat (Me, Rajesh, Ayun, Costis), great plan to disembark on a platform at the Sangam.