Lucknow

Lucknow became a capital in 1775, when Asaf-ud-Daula moved the court of Awadh here from Faizabad, and within a decade it had its defining monument. In 1784, with famine across the province, the Nawab began the Bara Imambara as a relief project — the story goes that labourers built by day and others, too proud to be seen working, dismantled part of it by night, so that the work and the wages would last. Its central hall has one of the largest vaulted roofs ever built without beams, and above it runs the Bhool Bhulaiya, a maze of hundreds of identical passages.

The Nawabs' world ended badly. The British annexed Awadh in 1856, and a year later Lucknow became one of the great sieges of the 1857 uprising, when the British garrison held out in the Residency for months. The ruins are still there, scarred by cannon, kept exactly as they were left.

Lucknow's culture is a matter of manners — tehzeeb, the elaborate courtesy captured in the old joke about two gentlemen who miss their train insisting 'pehle aap', after you. It is also a matter of hands: chikankari, white-on-white embroidery stitched in villages around the city, sold in the lanes of Chowk and Aminabad.

Most of all it is a matter of food. In 2025 UNESCO named Lucknow a Creative City of Gastronomy, which the city took as overdue. The galouti kebab, minced so fine it melts, was supposedly invented for a toothless Nawab; Tunday Kababi has served its version since 1905. There is Awadhi biryani cooked in the dum style, nihari with kulcha at dawn in the old city, sheermal and phirni, and in winter makhan malai — milk foam set overnight by the dew and gone by noon.

Hire a licensed guide at the Bara Imambara — the Bhool Bhulaiya is designed to lose you and does. Keep the ticket; it also covers the Chhota Imambara and the Husainabad picture gallery nearby. Eat in the old city in the morning, when the nihari is fresh, and in Aminabad at night. Walk Hazratganj after dark, the old habit locals call 'ganjing'. And go to the Residency late in the afternoon, when it is nearly empty and the light falls through the broken walls.

The imambaras are Shia religious buildings first, monuments second. Dress modestly, cover your head where asked, and stay away during Muharram unless you go with someone who can explain what you are seeing. Buy chikankari from the workshops and cooperatives — much of what is sold as hand embroidery now is machine-made, and the women who stitch it by hand earn very little.

Lucknow's refinement is half of Uttar Pradesh; the other half is the river. Varanasi is five or six hours away by road or rail — older, louder and more devout, and the perfect second act.