Into The Northern State

I wake a few minutes before my 4am alarm, wash and dress at the same time, then order a coffee from room service. It arrives twenty minutes later;I drink the hot sweet liquid while the manager conducts a pre-checkout inspection of the dilapidated room. A small cockroach scales the bedroom wall as the manager cranes his head into the filthy toilet cubicle. I pick my way down the darkened Bazar to New Delhi station in the pre-dawn chill of a dry Himalayan wind.
My train is waiting on platefrom 12 and I check the list posted next to coach 13's door; I am the only western reserved, my Irish name an interloper among the Sonals and Singhs, alien and undoubtedly unpronounceable to my fellow passengers. I buy an "espresso" from a wallah - the polar opposite of Hungarian espresso: sweet, milky, thick - and smoke a Wills on the plateform while I wait for departure time, checking the canopy above me for monkeys, whose specialty is aerial defecation from their perches in the rafters. A station announcement:
"For your kind attention: firearms and explosives are not allowed to travel on the train. This includes kerosene, petrol and cooking gas". Followed by: "Spitting on the platform is unhygienic; containers for this purpose are placed around the station".
The train is wide and spacious - thanks to the Imerial Broad gauge - with comfortable reclining seats in rows of five, complete with fold-down airline style tables; there are 24 coaches with a WAP electric locomotive at the head, which sounds a long blast of it's horn just before we pull out at 6.10am with a violent jolt of the couplings. It is pitch dark as the train crawls through the Delhi suburbs, the glow of cooking fires with shadows moving around them the only thing outside my window. Once into the countryside, the WAP picks up speed and dawn begins to tinge the horizon a misty pink. An announcement informs passengers that "The toilet doors must be locked before starting their usage", going on to give detailed instructions in Hindi and English on how this is successfully achieved. Breakfast is served to my table as the sun rises, washing the landscape with a velvety light: two vegetable cutlets, some chiplets, a couple of slices of sweet-tasting white bread and jam. The train rolls across the table-top flat Gangetic Plain at a constant speed of around 70mph; the line is completely straight and there are no gradients to negotiate, just the occasional junction or signal check to slow for. I watch dun-coloured mud-and-thatch villages pass the window; the geometric shapes of bamboo stands; rice paddies with low mist rising from them, as if simmering; grand Havelis, their pastel washed walls glowing against the emerald background of the land. I stand in the end vestibule and smoke a Wills Classic. Sometimes a narrow road will hug the line for a while, but there is no traffic and it soon disappears to leave the train alone in this huge open space. Indian music is broadcast over the tannoy for a few minutes before each stop to alert passengers that we are coming to a station, then an announcement is made. After a two minute pause at Kanpur, we slowly cross the Ganges on a long trestle bridge. After 7 hours I finally reach Lucknow; the music starts and the Hindi/English announcement gives details of the city, and it's cultural highlights - in this case Mughali cuisine and mosques, but no mention of the once besieged residency.
I walk out of Lucknow station and am immediately surrounded by a crowd of rickshaw wallahs, each frantically shouting, tugging at my clothes, desperate for my business; a gaggle of coolis wearing brown dhotis stand off to one side and watch me hopefully: they are employed by the railway and expressly forbidden from approaching me and asking whether they could carry my luggage - on their heads - to a destination of my choice for a small pittance. I negotiate a cycle-rickshaw fare with some difficulty, the standard and incidence of spoken English far lower here than in Delhi, and check into the Deep Avadh hotel. I produce my passport, leave a deposit and fill out a series of forms. I deposit my money in their safe - an enormously complex procedure involving the cashier, manager and head receptionist, who insist I count it all infront of them. The staff, from cleaners to doormen watch all of this in stunned silence, and I feel awful being forced to show what must be a vast sum of money to these people. The porter carries my bag to my room and enquires whether "Sir would like tea or coffee?"; he returns with a flask and places it next to The Times Of India on the table. I give him a generous tip and he smiles with rotten teeth and bows his head, backing out of the room, thanking me over and again.
The phone rings: reception requesting: "To please return to lobby bringing passport"; it seems I have omitted a signature from one of the forms, which can only be remedied on sight of my passport, just in case I have changed my identity since it was last seen a few minutes ago.
I take a rickshaw to Asaf-ud-Daula's mosque mid-afternoon and return form the 4km trip at 6.30pm after a jarring, painfully slow crawl through the city. I am filthy, my hair scrubbing-brush thick with dust, tired and thirsty. I buy a Kingfisher in the bar, dimly lit and hidden from view in the hotel's basement, decorated with kitsch paintings and furnished with cheap plastic club chairs; drinking is a guilty and secretive affair in many Indian states, and conducted behind closed doors and curtained windows in Uddar Pradesh. I order an Aloo Zeera and some paratha back in my room, scrubbing off the day's grime in the Indian style bucket-shower while I wait for it to arrive. Tomorrow I will go to the station with my timetable and spend whatever time necessary to book my onward ticket; then I will explore Lucknow properly.