Day in Cochin - nostalgic moments

It was time for Capto's second inning. We travelled a day in advance and stayed @ Cochin before heading to Aranmulla on a rented Innova. First day me, Meera and Sid visited Ramya's house followed by Kurup Auntiji's house. It was nice meeting both the families, especially auntiji who was alone and spent almost 3 hrs talking with us. Guess it would have been same for Auntiji also to meet (like we enjoyed).

Post meeting Aunty and relative, we headed to Lulu mall to cater to Sid's taste for fun games. He enjoyed few games including virtual rowing.

Day 1 - Kumbh - India's megaevent

After few deliberations decided to head to Kumbh (initial plan was to head to Gulmarg). Pawan and Capto decided to join, though Manoj did a drop out when plan started getting finalized. 

It was a week long trip. It followed something like this:

1. Bangalore to Lucknow: 
2. Lucknow to Allahabad (Prayagraj)
3. Prayagraj to Varanasi
4. Varanasi to Lucknow
5. Lucknow to Bangalore

Bangalore to Lucknow:

We decided to take this route given the flight tickets to Prayagraj was quite expensive. The flight to Lucknow was 1/3 of the cost and there were enough trains available for us to commute from Lucknow to Prayagraj. 

We reached early morning @ KIA thinking we can enjoy free breakfast at the Lounge courtesy credit card (free food option). However, both me and Pawan ended spending money on our card as our card was not eligible for the offer. 

It turned out to be a very expensive option given food outside of the lounge would have been cheaper and better quality;)

Anyways, we ensured we had our quota of omelette to do the paisa vasool (and to ensure we could skip the breakfast @ Lucknow). 

First day morning we landed in Lucknow and stayed @ Hotel Radical. The place was quite nice fornight stay for the money we spent. We decided to go round Lucknow (more or less to try food). For lunch we ended up @ Moti Mahal restaurant to try some chats. The food was good though i would not rate it as exceptional. 

We tried Chole Bature, some sweets and chats. Pawan was happy to have veg food of Lucknow (well he did not realize that the journey ahead was with two non veggies). 

Post that we headed to Imam Bargah which is built as mourning place for the Muslims who sacrificed their life to uphold truth. Inside it is the Bhool Bhulaiya, which is the main attraction for folks to visit. We went inside and did realize that it is a struggle at times to find the way back with routes all ending in different directions or reaching without an end.

Post the visit it was time for me and Capto to try the famous Tunday's. We had tried the Bangalore one, but were keen to try the original Tunday's of Lucknow.

The journey back from there was bit difficult given the availability of transportation, or rather to say, knowhow of how to find right transport for commuting. We took rick and went to a veg restaurant to ensure Pawan had his share of dinner.

Once done on way back me and capto decided to have a share of drinks before the holy dip to ganges;). It was a complete different experience with lot of walks combined with traffic which was quite unexpected (Rickshaws, electric autos, vikrams, etc).