My Ride to School and an Afternoon Fieldtrip

My room opens onto the street below. Last night I was up in the middle of the night because I've been a little sick this week with a fever and, therefore, sleeping lots and lots, but sometimes at weird hours. This morning I was awakened by one of the girls across the street yelling at someone (something?) to get out of the house. I felt compelled to get out of bed in order to see what was happening. It was the cow below. By the time I got my camera, the front door had been secured, but the cow's determination was pleasantly funny to me, so I thought I share.

Because I woke up late-ish this morning (about 7 am) I didn't go to yoga and just headed to school. This means that I take a picture-esqe route (instead of the boring one) and I thought I'd take pictures along the way. . . . Below is one of the small roads (gully in Hindi) that I take. In effect, I work through a maze of streets so that I don't have to take the highway (the site of my accident). As you can see, traffic lanes don't exist really anywhere, the streets are pretty narrow, and sometimes, in nice areas, the houses are beautifully painted. Because it is early in the morning, the street is extremely empty. In a few hours it'll be full of cars, bicycles, rickshaws, horse-drawn carts, and people walking.


There are also a couple of historical buildings that I pass along the way. This abandoned administration building's yard is where young boys often play cricket in the morning. In the background is construction on a new high-rise (probably of apartments. I am not sure if it is clear from this picture, but the scaffolding is made from bamboo tied together. I find this horribly terrifying and I have met men who have fallen because the bamboo scaffolding is of dubious sturdiness. It really makes me thankful that there are many jobs I will never try.)


In addition to sometimes crazy traffic, other things in Lucknow sometimes cause delays on the way to school. The below road was closed due to cows, and people just hanging out with the cows.
And below is my favorite. To be honest, I have no idea what the old remains are, but I do think they are beautiful (especially in the golden early morning sun) and always remind me that here I make a left turn. I also find it interesting that a few families live in and around this old architectural site. You can see them eating breakfast and preparing for the day in the bottom left of the photo.



Today school took us on a trip to the Residency, which is a huge complex of buildings that the British lived in before the first war for Independence in 1857. Lucknow was the center of this war and the fighting was fierce. The picture to the right is a picture of a cross built to remember those who died. In the museum, it said that over 20,000 Indian soldiers lost their lives. The Residency was besieged during this time and the building below shows the bullet holes and the cannon ball holes from the siege.













There is also a beautiful mosque that was part of the original Residency and that is still used by people as a site of prayer today. It is set up a series of stairs, but below there were these beautiful colonnade ruins that a friend took a picture of me in.