Day 56 - 11th Apr 2009

Thankfully I woke up feeling much better and slept surprisingly well on the train. We arrived into Lucknow, thankfully the last stop so it was easy to know when to get off, at about 6 am. We got off the train and joined the flood of people heading in a direction we hoped was the exit. We decided to get a motorised mini vehicle to the hotel, I would have called it a TukTuk but they seem to be called moto or auto's here. To our delight the hotel let us have our room early so we checked in and cleaned up, I don't think I've been that grubby since I was a kid and didn't know better! As I was removing all the dirt from me I felt something on my back, I asked Adam to look and he tried to brush it off but said it was attached we then realised it must be a Tick! At least there was a reason why we'd brought tweezers with us!

We ate some breakfast at the hotel which was great as we hadn't had a proper meal since yesterdays breakfast! We then headed out so got a rickshaw to the Residency, unfortunately all the drivers wanted to take us round for a whole day which we didn't want. We thought we'd managed to agree a price with a driver to take us just to the Residency but as it turned out he didn't think the same as us! Our driver once we arrived went to the ticket counter and started saying stuff, we didn't understand, so in the end we just gave him the money we'd said and bought our tickets. There is a two tier ticketing system so if you ar Indian you get in very cheaply but foreigners have to pay a lot more, although it's still cheap. We had a wander round, it's basically buildings that British lived in when they governed the town, it has been left how it was after a seige in 1857. Whilst walking around we met a group of men who wanted their picture taken with Adam! It was very weird, we were celebrities for about 2 minutes.

When we came out of the place to go back to our hotel the rickshaw driver was waiting for us, he produced a piece of paper which seemed to list all of the Lucknow sights and at the bottom it said that we had taken 220 rupees from him because we had bought our own tickets. I think he had wanted to get us tickets at the price for locals and then pocket the difference for himself. At this we decided to walk away from him as communication was obviously not going very well. So we walked up the road and of course the bike man followed, luckily there was a auto nearby which we jumped in and got away from our rickshaw driver!

We had lunch at the hotel and used their computer to put some pictures on the website, then decided to head out just for a bit of a walk around. This is harder than it sounds because all the rickshaw drivers wanted to take us somewhere. We found some shops and had a browse in a few, I decided to buy a top from United Colours of Benneton, the staff where very attentive and helpful. As Adam was paying using our Visa card he somehow entered an amount when he should have been putting in his PIN and ended up paying about £1000 for my top! The staff found this pretty funny as it was such a huge amount, they quickly voided the sale and put it through at the correct price! It was almost a very costly shopping spree! We headed back to the hotel stopping en route to buy a Pepsi which I think you have to drink at the stall because they use glass bottles which I think get reused.

We ate dinner at the hotel and had some Indian dishes, not too disimilar to Indian food back home really. Then crashed out at about 9pm!