Ballari Jn - Look around and enjoy the station. A sacred place where Mahatma Gandhi once spent 8 hours. - Vishwanath Joshi

ALLAHABAD TO LUCKNOW

My train was the Nauchandi Express. Since majority of trains to LKO now start from 'Prayagraj Sangam' station [ a newly minted station, it was earlier called Prayag Ghat. Check the old pics of the station from like ~10 years ago. They depict a very different dilapidated station (/blog/post/975456) ], I took a shared auto to the station. Due to peak evening traffic, it took ~45 minutes to reach the station. It is next to Daraganj station, which is basically a halt kind of station with no FOB...
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or multiple loop lines.My booking was in Third AC.

I footplated upto Phaphamau Jn and lots of people boarded at Prayag and Phaphamau. When I came back to my seat, it was 'taken' by two policemen already. One had a reservation in Side Upper [mine was Side Lower] and other did not. The latter one was allotted a partial seat by the TT at another location but he didn't budge from my seat either. So, whilst other Side lower pax were sleeping, here we were, three pax in a single for no reason what so ever. I would have been comfortable had it been 2 folks sitting back to back [like in Sleeper coaches] but here we had our backs to the windows and it was uncomfortable. I had to complain online [after which the TT came to resolve the situation] before I got my complete seat back.

I drifted in and out of my sleep in our fast passenger as it stopped at almost each station en route before we reached RBL. The coaches were well cleaned and few folks boarded at each station in AC coaches as well. I slept between RBL-LKO and woke up at Dilkusha cabin at outskirts of Lucknow. Some minutes later, as I went to the door to deboard, I saw a mass of humanity waiting to climb the train. Some clever person even decided that boarding a running train in HA1 coach[I was deboarding from the next coach to mine B1] was a good idea before ultimately deciding against it. I barely could navigate my way through the mass of traffic.