Friday, January 4, 2008

Allahabad

Sarah came to visit for a week over Christmas which meant we had a chance to explore Allahabad. Unfortunately there's not much here. Immediately after she arrived we went to see some Moghul tombs which are very near the train station. There are three in a row and they are quite impressive and I'm sure they see very few tourists. It was early in the morning and there were just a few locals hanging around, some doing some yoga. One of them is for the brother of the builder of the Taj Mahal. He failed in a coup attempt, and if he'd succeeded there'd be no Taj Mahal.

The next day we walked along and across the Ganges from the institute to the Sangam (where the Ganges meets the Yamuna). We were able to walk across because soon will be the most auspicious time to bathe in the Ganges and people will be coming from all over: they are setting up electricity and lighting for huge tent villages on the dried out flats by the river, as well as a pontoon bridge. At the Sangam itself you can see there are lots of stalls hawking various things, and lots of boats to take people out to the point where the waters of the two rivers meet. We didn't take a boat trip, or a bath in the waters.

A few days later was Christmas and Sarah was getting a bit bored by this time. We went to the posh 4 star hotel for dinner and a few beers with Andreas (5 year fellow here). The hotel, and many of the other more expensive restaurants around town did have their Christmas decorations up, but they did rely a bit heavily on balloons. A had Tandoori fish and a creation which was a bit like a posh Scotch egg curry. We went to the hotel bar afterwards and sampled the (terrible) Indian whisky (manageable with coke!). A drunken Indian offered to give the three of us a ride home on his motorbike (the paper today had a picture of 2 parents and 4 children on a small scooter in town).

The rest of the week there was not much to do but go out for dinner a few times. I resisted the temptation to go to the seminars that were scheduled on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. On Saturday we set of together for Khajuraho.

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