A Right Turn and Then Some

Summary: A weekend of new experiences included a friendly game of cricket and an exploration of the city on bicycle.

For those of you who have always told me that I will never become a professional cricket player, I am here to prove you right. This past weekend, I played a semi-organized game of cricket for the first time, with a bunch of other equally clueless Americans and a handful of local kids. The chosen field was in a relatively quiet neighborhood, and the boundary wall was high enough to prevent an otherwise inevitable growing crowd of curious observers.

This was, in short, the perfect introduction to cricket. Both my throwing and hitting form was a bit off, but it was nonetheless loads of fun.

My “new adventure” bug wasn’t so easily quenched. Given that cricket occurred at 10 am and took place in a semi-familiar area of town, I took the opportunity to go on a bicycle joy ride around town (never before had I left my neighborhood area of Gomti Nagar). I followed unfamiliar major roads just to end up in another (different) familiar area, from which I followed my directional instinct that was to lead me back home.

As I biked toward what I thought was Gomti Nagar, I suddenly saw a sign for Clark’s hotel. To my knowledge, there was only one Clark’s hotel, and that one existed on the far side of Hazratganj, the original familiar territory. Sure enough, this was the same one; as I biked through Hazratganj again, I racked my head trying to figure out how I managed to bike away from home.

A quick consultation with Google Maps upon reaching home clarified the situation; a right turn that took me in the wrong direction, and a left turn that took me back in a right one.

I maintain that had Lucknow been developed on a grid system, the turns I made would have taken me home. My fatal mistake was forgetting that I was in India, where urban planning doesn’t exist and things are never as you expect.