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.

HRI

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On the evening of the 8th of October I arrived at HRI, a bit tired after the train journey. As you can see from the map it fairly central in India, in Uttar Pradesh, in the so called Hindi-belt or cow-belt. Many of the students and faculty here are Bengali and UP is regarded as a bit backward. The town of Allahabad had all the noise, dirt and stray animals, but the Campus itself, not far from the Ganges on the outskirts of town has a nice green, relatively peaceful site with plenty of armed guards on hand.

When I arrved I got the key to my flat. I was expecting a one room studenty affair, but I have a two bedroom flat with a kitchen. Since I'm carrying only one rucksack of posessions it looks very bare. Include are pictures of the main bedroom and front room. The flat has a population of lizards, and pigeons who live ontop of a primative metal airconditioner on my windowsill (it acts as a drum/amplifier when they get rowdy around dawn each morning). I thought I'd escape the terror of the pigeons after they hassled me in my early Cambridge rooms, but they seem to be in every bloody country in the world. Is nowhere safe? There was also lots of building and decorating ahead of an external review a few weeks back. The banging has only now subsided. Again builders seemed to follow me everywhere at the end of last year (reroofing our flat, outside my offices in Cambride and London). Anyway enough moaning. The next day I also was given an office, a whole one to myself this time, which is quite lucky as post-docs here (like most places) have to share. I have the office of a recently departed faculty member.

Meals are taken in the mess, a Canteen like place where you present your metal tray and get rice, daal, 2 mysterious veggie boiled mush things and chapatis. If you're lucky sometimes there are parathas, desserts or salady stuff. It's not bad really, everything (including breakfast) is spiced but not very hot. Things are on a weekly repetition, which changes every month depending who's in charge. However this month they've hardly changed it so it's getting very repetitive.

There's also a "pantry" where you can get tea (chai). It recently moved to shiny new premises with a crazy voucher system whereby you have to by tokens beforehand and then exchange them for tea. Genius. They were letting me just pay with money, but a warning email went round about this and I have to buy a big book of tokens now (not from the pantry itself, no, from reception or some mysterious office, which often run out of tokens so you can't get any tea!).

Well I seem to be ranting a bit in this post but all in all life on the Campus is fine, it's much cleaner and safer than outside but pretty isolated. I don't think I'd like to stay much longer than I am.