Road Trip — Varanasi — Lucknow — Varanasi

“All he needed was a wheel in his hand and four on the road.”

Introduction

The Diwali Season of 2021, it’s the time to go to my hometown Varanasi, to spend the festival with my family but this time it’s different, this time my wife will be joining me as well to spend Diwali.
Since it was her first time visiting Uttar Pradesh, I wanted to take her around the state to show her different cultures. Hence, a road trip to the capital city of Lucknow.

Varanasi — Lucknow Route

We spend Diwali with our family and embarked on our journey to Lucknow.
We started our journey at 6 am in the morning and went via the following route:-
Varanasi-Handia-Raebareli-Lucknow (FYI when I took this road trip Purvanchal Expressway was still under construction, but it’s open now).
Road was filled with scenic beauty and we cruised our way to Lucknow. Reached Lucknow around 10:30 am in the morning which was shocking for me as well, because I was driving within the speed limit designed on a particular highway.

Lucknow — City of Nawabs

Day 1

After getting refreshed, we started exploring Lucknow, we started from Rumi Darwaza, Bara Imambara, Clock Tower, and the 1857-Memorial Museum.
After a packed afternoon, we came back to the hotel and retired for the night.

Day 2

We planned to go today for Ayodhya, but since I was feeling under the weather so we dropped the plan and called a couple of college friends for a get-together.
We met all of them in the evening, had a great time, and went to Gomti Riverfront in the evening for a walk and chill there for a while.

Day 3

It was shopping day, we went out early in the morning to buy souvenirs for families as Lucknow is the only place where you “eat chicken and wear chikan”.
Hazaratganj is one of the main centers for shopping, but if you want you can go to Aminabad by taking an auto/rickshaw from Hazratganj.

Lucknow — Varanasi Route

We came via the same route through which we went to Lucknow, but this time my wife was taking a very long nap during the entire journey. :P

Conclusion

Things to note:-
=> There are new routes that are present to go from Varanasi to Lucknow, which I would like to try as they go via a different route.
=> The route I took, converges to 2 lane road which become challenging as the roads were very bad.
=> There’re a lot of eateries in Lucknow if you’re a non-veg lover, so I will encourage people to definitely go to Aminabad in the evening to try the cuisine.