Look now where Mark is!

Yes, it's a poor pun but Mark is now in Lucknow . When some pupils asked me in school today to show them where Mark was, I happily homed in on his tracker. I quickly realised, however, that fascinating though the close up views may be, you sometimes need to 'draw back' a bit in Google maps to get some points of reference. ...... As a quick search on Google will prove, there is absolutely no shortage of material on Lucknow! A very brief summary .... it's a city of 2.5 million and it is the state capital of Uttar Pradesh. Most sources quote it as a multicutural city with gardens, the Arts and cuisine featuring strongly. Industries includes steel, aeronautics, car and scooter manufacture with an emerging sector which includes IT and biotechnology. Education, banking and legal institutions dominate the service sector.

Lucknow, it would seem, is the heartland of Nawabi culture which has nothing to do with geography - other than the fact that the geography teacher writing this blog has an affinity for Indian cuisine and can now 'place' Nawabi Biryani!

I am always mindful that even after lots of Internet research, it is difficult to get any real feel for a city like Lucknow so here is a piece of video - another of those 'drive through the streets' sequences which probably says more than lots of words can..

By contrast, as a search on Flickr proved, there are some stunning pieces of architecture in Lucknow....