Blogs from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India, Asia - page 3

Hello everyone. Things are starting to get settled here in Lucknow. I apologize for the lateness of this message, I had no idea it would take this long to set into any sort of regular routine. But anyway, what should I say…(I promise the rest of my posts will not be as long as this) The journey to arrive first in Delhi then in Lucknow was long (30 hours total spent sitting on planes within a four day period) as I went from Chicago to Boston to DC to Chicago again then to Delhi and finally Lucknow. My two days in Delhi were full of orientation activities, and a highlight would have to be when the gentleman in charge of security for official American diplomatic interests in India spoke to our group about matters related to ... read more

Sunday 28th April 2008 I woke up feeling extremely queasy but managed to go out with the group to begin the immunisation programme. When we arrived at our medical station it was mahem. There were, what seemed to be, hundreds of children, all swarming around like locusts waiting for their gifts. It was quite a job to control them all. The children receiving the polio drops were mainly babes in arms and toddlers, apparently the strain of polio in this area only affects very young children. The older children aged 5 to 10 years, had come along as observers and to collect any gifts they could. They were very grateful for all the things we gave them. The tent was pitched on sandy soil and next to the tent, where we were immunising the babies, there ... read more

Friday 25th April The temperature today-41 deg C. We spent the morning walking around the town near our hotel, watching people cooking at the side of the road, repairing tuck-tucks and participating in all kinds of roadside businesses, all perfect photo opportunities! We met a man from the Hindustani Times, a local newspaper. He took us into the centre of town to Connaught Place. We visited the tourist Information Centre. Yesterday Geoff and I ordered a blue, cotton made to measure shirt each for £18 each, today we collected them and very nice they are too. At 3.30pm we flew out of Delhi airport for the 2 and a half hour journey to Lucknow. We arrived at 6.00pm to be greeted by lots of buzzing mosquitoes, all desperate to drink our blood! Fortunately, we were well ... read more

The not talking period ended last night, so time to break the blog silence as well. I will write more about the course in the coming days, I just want to let y'all know that I worked my way through those 10 difficult but very interesting days. I am in Lucknow city again, hanging around with some of the people who were on the same course. It feels good to have a little buffer time to spend together after that long silence and intensive self-exploration. 3 of us are taking the train to Varanasi this evening, so that will definately put an end to our feeling of tranquility. But we learned how to be "perfectly equanimous", so we should be able to handle it all ;-) ... read more

Despite ye olde bowels still being far from healthy, I managed to down some bananas this morning, which will supposedly assist my recovery. I was also lucky that the hotel (for Rs 100 commission) purchased my onward train ticket for me, which saved me the rickshaw trips to/from the station, plus no doubt a ton of waiting time at Lucknow's notoriously busy reservations counter. With that potential headache resolved, I decided to head out for a spot of sight-seeing. If Westerners know anything about Lucknow, it's that it was the site of a mutiny in 1857, in which 3,000 British and British-sympathisers were put under siege in the Residency building by Indian soldiers - when they were finally relieved, only about 1,000 were still alive. Of course, the other view of this version of events is ... read more