{"id":606,"date":"2007-07-12T08:09:18","date_gmt":"2007-07-12T08:09:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/archives\/2007\/07\/12\/bauchi\/"},"modified":"2007-10-05T22:27:34","modified_gmt":"2007-10-05T22:27:34","slug":"bauchi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/archives\/2007\/07\/12\/bauchi\/","title":{"rendered":"Bauchi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My next stop was Bauchi, mostly of interest as the nearest city to Yankari National Park.  It&#8217;s quite a nice city, although the only thing you could call a tourist attraction is the crumbling but still impressive tomb of Nigeria&#8217;s first prime minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa.<\/p>\n<p>In the evening I went for a stroll around the old city, the old mud walls seem to be in slightly better condition than in Kano and Zaria.<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Bauchi\/Jul2007\/Bauchi2_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Bauchi\/Jul2007\/Bauchi2_t.jpg\" alt=\"In the foreground a hill slopes down towards the remnants of a mud wall and a modern white concrete gate with a major road passing through it.\" title=\"Looking over Bauchi from a hill near Kofar Wambai.  The gate and part of the old wall can be seen.\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Bauchi\/Jul2007\/BauchiWall_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Bauchi\/Jul2007\/BauchiWall_t.jpg\" alt=\"Crumbling mud wall with a goat standing on it.\" title=\"Part of Bauchi's old city wall, complete with goat.\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I took an <a href=\"\/_static\/site\/NGglossary#okada\" class=\"glossary\">okada<\/a> to the Emir&#8217;s palace, the young rider took me on a slightly roundabout route, showing off his <em>baturi<\/em> passenger to his friends.  I was amused to see that he&#8217;d painted a thin beard on his chin, to augment the few hairs growing there.  In the square outside the Emir&#8217;s Palace and the prison local youths were playing football.  It seems to be quite organised, with a referee and someone who seemed to be a coach.  Lots of local men and boys were watching, with various vendors selling fried yam, <a href=\"\/_static\/site\/NGglossary#akara\" class=\"glossary\">akara<\/a> (kosai in Hausa) and other street food.<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Bauchi\/Jul2007\/BauchiEmirsPalace_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Bauchi\/Jul2007\/BauchiEmirsPalace_t.jpg\" alt=\"An impressive concrete building, painted a kind of dull tan.\" title=\"The palace of the Emir of Bauchi.\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Bauchi\/Jul2007\/BauchiFootball1_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Bauchi\/Jul2007\/BauchiFootball1_t.jpg\" alt=\"Young men playing football on a dirt pitch in front of a high wall.\" title=\"Youths playing football outside Bauchi prison.\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As the dusty pitch is surrounded by a prison wall on one side and busy roads on the other three sides the players often had to run out into the road to fetch the ball.  I&#8217;m surprised they never got run over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My next stop was Bauchi, mostly of interest as the nearest city to Yankari National Park. It&#8217;s quite a nice city, although the only thing you could call a tourist attraction is the crumbling but still impressive tomb of Nigeria&#8217;s first prime minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. In the evening I went for a stroll around [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bradt","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}