Mosques, spice stalls and a mad Englishman

The next morning we found our German, and took him to the park for a chat.
 
 

We went back for another peek at the square in the day-time, and it was very peaceful and quiet (despite an overweight 8yr old dressed entirely in pink bouncing a football off the sides of the mosque, causing mindshattering echoes…)

We watched a fight ensue between a street-junkie and a shopkeeper, and bought ourselves five flavours of icecream.  

We found another, smaller mosque, even more stunning in gold tiling and stood in the corner and stared at the ceiling for a while.  An odd gate-keeper turned up, possibly slightly deranged but very friendly, and, using a scrubby note in English he kept in his pocket, asked for stamps or postcards from Britain.  He was really nice and I would have given him large numbers of them, but I sadly had none.  

We wandered the bazaars and the spice-stalls, feeling like we had properly reached exotic climes.
 

Later that night we visited the humungous bridge over the river.  Well, not actually.  There is no river.  All the water has vanished.  As in none.  There were little row-boats in the middle of the cracked river-bed, looking a bit forlorn, and gaggles of teenagers crossed the riverbed, giggling. 

We sat around in the courtyard with some of the backpacking hotel-dwellers and our German, and a little dreadlocked cyclist guy turned up with a giant watermelon.

We met an English bloke outside the front- he was packing some very meagre possessions into the pannier of a Yamaha 135- a tiny bike he had picked up in Nepal.  We chatted for a bit. 

It turned out he was riding back from Nepal to England, and had recently broken his leg in Lucknow, but didn’t seem fussed about it.  He was very much in the spirit of silliness, and thoroughly cheered me up with his nonfussiness.  I would have liked to take him with us.