Weekend in Bangalore

I didn't realize how much of a village Vellore was until I actually took a trip to the big city. This past weekend, Erica and I made a trip to Bangalore (AKA Bengaluru). Bangalore is located in the state to the NW of Tamil Nadu (where Vellore is located) in Karnataka. It is know as the place to go if you are looking for work in the IT industry. Our trip started off on a rough leg since my alarm clock (Erica) woke me up at 7:10am when were surposed to leave for the train station at 7:30am to catch our train that would be leaving at 9:10am. I hadn't packed any of my clothes or taken a shower the night before so I was kind of in a hurry. We made it out the door in time, but it didn't matter anyway b/c our train came about 30minutes late.

Waiting at the train station was an adventure in its self. I was kind of excited about the whole trip since this would be my first time on a transit train. Of course at the train station we were met with lots of stares from the locals. It was kind of cold outside also that morning and it also started to sprinkle a bit. I expected the worse about the actual train ride, but it wasn't that bad. We were in an A/C coach and everyone had their own sits with a portable table in front. I slept pretty much the whole way to the Banglore, which was about 3 and a half hours out of Vellore. Every now and then I would wake up to the sounds of vendors selling bread/egg omelets, dosas, or tea. The food smelled great, but I kept to munching on the biscuits I had in my bag which I knew were safe. The train did not make any announcements about what city they were stopping at so I had to periodically look outside the window to see where we stopped. That was annoying.

When we finally arrived in Banglore we took a ricksaw to our hotel called Hotel Maurya. It was so nice to see paved roads and traffic lights which people actually stopped for. But of course with traffic lights and organization came ridculous traffic. It took forever to get anywhere in this city. It was also nice to see motorcyclist with helmets on, but their partners on their bikes never had helmets on, which bothered me a bit. People also seemed really laid back & friendly in this city and are very willing to help with directions. More people were dressed in western clothing and I looking kind of out of place in my Indian dress. Most people spoke pretty good English that wasn't too hard to understand. Plus the hotel we stayed at was surprisingly nice. We luckily found it on http://www.hostelbookers.com/. It was only about $50 a night and it turned out to be pretty nice. It didn't have sketchy sheets or anything. I actually slept well my first night there without the feeling that anything was biting me throughout the night.

As soon as we set our stuff down in our hotel, we were off to find something to eat. I am not a picky eater and will eat pretty much anything if it tastes decent. My roomie on the otherhand is getting a bit tired of Indian food so I let her pick everywhere we went to eat. We decided to have a curry free weekend and try to enjoy western foods while we were in Banglore. So our first stop was good ole McDonalds. The funny part was that it was more like a Chickfila b/c they only had chicken sandwiches. The sandwich was delicious but very small and the fries were pretty good & a lot less greasy than the stuff you get in the states. Plus they had diet coke, which does not exist in Vellore.

After that we decided to go see a movie. I really wanted to see a Bollywood movie, but soon found out that most of the Indian movies did not have any English subtitles so we were stuck watching only English speaking movies. Our only two choices were: P.S. I Love You and Enchanted. Erica wanted to see P.S. I Love You, but I am not the biggest fan of romance flicks so I was all for Enchanted. I love kids movies; plus it was a Disney movie so there is no way it was going to suck. And of course I was right. The movie was hillarious. I think Erica and I were the two loudest people in the theater.

In the theater, you can get buttered popcorn or caramel. We went with the caramel option, which we soon found out was the better option. The popcorn was yummy. Also during the movies they had intermission. At first we thought that the electricity had gone out but soon found out that it was just a break in the movie for customers to go use the toilet or get more food from the concession stand. The movie theater we went to was called INOX and it was inside a mall. The malls in Banglore were really nice. We went to two of them: one where we ate McDonald's and the other where we saw the movie. The shops had such nicer stuff than you would find in Vellore so we had a field day there.

The next thing on our agenda was to find this company called City Swaps that I had read about them in Lonely Planet. They were surposed to be a double decker touring company that drops you off at 15 different tourist spots around Banglore for only 300 Rupees. We soon found out that they didn't exist anymore and had to look for other options. After spending a good couple of hours walking around the city looking for City Swaps, we were hungry again. We looked through Lonely Planet and found a steakhouse called "Our City Place." I wasn't expecting much especially after the mess we ate in Pondy, but this place turned out to be really good. I don't even really like steak but this food was really good. After eating there we came across a cute little gift shop outside of the restaurant. Erica and I spent about an hour in this shop. I bought earrings, table mats, and costers. From this point on I decided I need to stop buying stuff for me and start concentrating on purchasing stuff for other people.

The next morning, the hotel had free breakfast. This food was not so great. In fact, I thought I was going to throw up after eating it. After breakfast we walked to Banglore's government tourist agency to see if we could get in on a morning tour of the town. The brochure specifically stated that their guides were "...having good knowledge of English," but of course this was not the case. I should have known better from the poor English written in the brochure.

Of course since we were in India, something had to be wrong with our tour. First of all, our bus was not air-conditioned. This was fine whenever the bus was moving b/c we would have cool breeze, but with the crazy amount of traffic we spent a lot of time just sitting in bumper to bumper traffic. Also our tour guide literally sounded like this to me: for example lets say we were stopping to see the Bull Temple, all I heard was "Bangala bangala Bull Temple bangala bangala." Whenever he spoke, I would be like what the hell is he saying? I would look around the bus and everyone else on the bus would nod in agreement to whatever he was saying. Erica and I always looked totally confused. When we would ask the guy to repeat what he was saying he would just say "BANGALA BANGALA" louder and look annoyed at us for not understanding his perfect English. Luckily everyone else on the bus was super nice and very willing to repeat whatever we could not hear him saying. The other people on our tour included two IT guys from South India, a girl from Israel, two families with small children, and a large family from Goa.

Our first stop was at Iskcon Temple. Again we had to take off our shoes and walk through an intricate maze to see this temple. Everyone was chanting "Hare Krishma Hare Krishma Hare Krishma Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Hare Hare." They gave us a card stating that you surposed to repeat this chant 108 times a day. ISKCON temples are dedicated to Lord Krishna and were built by the Hare-Rama Hare-Krishna cult followers. As we climbed the granite steps there were three small shrines before the main temple. The three idols of Lord Krishna in the main shrine are made of brass. When we returned to the tour bus after this visit, we waited outside the bus by a local village for the other tourists to return from the temple. Pretty soon Erica and I were joined by a group of old men from the village that sat close by and just stared at us. They asked me if I was West Indian and I said no. They really never see Black people in this country. Everyone thinks I am West Indian for some reason. Maybe it is b/c of my braids.

We drove by Vidhana Soudha, which is like the White House of banglore. This building houses Karnataka's state legislature and secretariat. We also drove by Cubbon Park, which is named after Lord Cubbon who is the longest serving Commissioner of Banglore. Please note: I did not get all this information from our tour guide since I couldn't understand what the hell he was saying. I had to google these places myself or ask the other tourists in the buses for specifics. The tour guide then took us to an Emporium for shopping. Why were there only two shops? It was really shady too, b/c the store owners wouldn't leave you alone and were really pressuring me to buy something. I think they had some deal going with the tour guide. Maybe he gets some of their profits. The tour guide even pulled me and Erica aside at one point and told us that he wanted to just take just us two to a special shop for more shopping but we told him no thank you since we were already disappointed with the first stop.

We stopped at some sketchy restaurant for lunch. The waiter could never understand what either Erica or I were saying. At the restaurant, I came to realize if you don't speak English with an Indian accent or annunciate your consonants, nobody understands you. Whenever the other tourists would repeat the same thing Erica and I would say, they would magically understand what we had said.

After the tour, Erica and I were hungry again. We found this pizzeria called Giancarlo's Place in a tour book that looked like a nice place to have dinner. It wasn't until we were trying to get a ricksaw to this place that we realized how crooked the ricksaw drivers in Banglore are. In Lonely Planet, it stated that ricksaw drivers are required to use their meters with customers. During our first day, I did not even notice that the ricksaw drivers we used were never using their meters b/c we were so excited to be in the big city. All of a sudden I began to realize that Bangalore is not that big of a city and we were getting charged way too much for wherever we were going. So I started asking the front desk of our hotel how much it should cost to go from the hotel to a certain place. The receptionist would always quote a price that was 1/3 that the ricksaw drivers would give. Our problem was that there was this guy outside our hotel who I like to call the "ricksaw mafia boss" would stand outside our hotel and dictate to other ricksaw drivers how much they should charge us. I would try to go further down the street to get a driver but the ricksaws would still stop in front of him to ask how much they should charge. It got so bad that I had to get one of the guys from the hotel to come talk him into giving us a ricksaw for 50 rupees, but of course when we got into the ricksaw and the guy from the hotel had disappeared, he upped the price to 60 rupees b/c of traffic. What a jerk!

Anyway, after a lot of frustration we finally got to the pizzeria. It turned out to be this really posh restaurant that you have to make a reservation for before coming there. B/c we didn't have a reservation, the owner gave us a sit at the bar which was fine by us. The pizza was really good and the bartender made the best cocktails. He was supposibly voted the best cocktail maker in all of South Indian. He gave us lots of free drinks and was fun to talk to.

That night, I had horrible sleep for some reason: First the back of my right knee (specifically my left popiteal fossa) was killing me. I was convinced the whole night I was experiencing a DVT, which made it even harder for me to sleep. I was afraid I would wake up dead due to a pulmonary embolism. I know, I have issues. I worry too much. It didn't help that our neighbors were incredibly loud the whole night and you could hear all the honking horns and cars outside our hotel in our room.

We left back for Vellore the next morning via train. The trip back was not as nice as going to Bangalore. We somehow ended up on a sleeper train near a family with lots of kids. I love children, but they are not fun to be near when you are travelling and sleeping. These kids were very noisy. They sang songs, played some spelling game, they started dancing, and then I think they were mocking Erica too. One of their family members had asked Erica her name and where she was from. Soon afterwards, I heard one of the kids giggling as she said with a pretend American accent, "Hi, my name is Erica."

Pictures above:

1) This is the food we bought at McDonald's.

2) This is us in front of Mc Donald's. I had to take a pic with Ronald McDonald.

3) This pic is from the second mall we went to. When we walked into the mall, we smelled a familiar smell and realized it was the smell of a chocolate chip cookie. We were so excited when we found the Cookie Man store b/c we have been discussing how we miss having chocolate chip cookies. So we got a sample cookie but they were stale so we didn't buy any cookies. Saddness.

4) This pic is outside Iskcon Temple.

5) This is at Tipu's Palace. This place goes back to the Mughal era. Erica and I had to pay an extra 100 rupees just to enter this palace b/c we are American citizens. At first when the tour guide was only letting the Indian citizens into the palace we thought he was just being shady again. But then he showed us a sign that said American citizens have to pay 100 extra Rupees.

6) This is outside of Tipu's Palace. I decided to join the locals and have a tender coconut. It doesn't taste that great so I don't know why everyone is always drinking it.
7), 8) These are pictures from our stop at the Lalbagh Botanical Gardens. The garden was beautiful and huge. You could spend all day walking around the gardens. There were lots of couples sitting in the grass and on the benches. They were so cute. 7) is of a fossil tree. It is a stump of a tree that has been around for 20+ million years. It is so old that it looks like a stone rather than a tree. 8) is of a flower clock. It is literally a huge clock made out of flowers. It had statues of the seven dwarfs around them which was really random.

9) This pic is from Wilkepedia. It is of the Vidhana Soudha. I couldn't get a good shot of the building from the bus.
10) This pic is also from the web. It is of Cubbon Park. I couldn't get a good shot of this spot either.

11) This is behind the bar at the pizza place. I was attempting to wear of the waiter's hats but it was way too small for my big head.

12) This is the pizza chef. They got him straight from Italy just to make pizza's at this place.

13) This is a picture of Erica in the sleeper train. The train provided sheets in a brown paper bag that read "These sheets have been in a mechanical laundry and if they are emitting a foul odor please ask for new sheets." So I used them since mine weren't emitting any odors so I assumed they were safe, plus it was really cold on the train.