Travelling in Uttar Pradesh

Now, I love to travel. A friend and I often joke that creating a map with little green flags to mark the places we want to visit wouldn't work for us..we would just have to get a spray can of paint and colour the entire globe green. That is not quite true. I have never had an urge to visit the Hindi heartland of India, The Darkness as Adiga calls it. So you can guess how excited I was when I began working on a project that requires travel here..
Where exactly is 'here'?

here's a map of where my colleagues and I spent a couple of weeks:

View travelling in Uttar Pradesh in a larger map

week 1: we travelled from Dehradun-Bareilly-Badayoon. We then stayed at the quite acceptable Tourist Guesthouse in Badayoon and commuted to Kachla ghat to conduct surveys.
week 2: We moved our base from Badayoon to Kalyanpur. We stayed in Kalyanpur (bang on the Grand Trunk Road, which is simultaneously the best and worst of locations) and commuted to Bithoor.
end of the 2nd week, we returned to Dun and enjoyed being cosseted by our families.

stories and photos follow. But here is a glimpse of 'India Shining ' UP-style..

young coin-collectors, kachhla bridge