Bangaluru: It ain’t just fun to say!
In Bangalore (Bangaluru is the traditional way of spelling it) you notice something right away. It ain’t like the rest of India. As the IT hub it is young, hip, liberal, and clean! Cloé and I arrived on Wednesday evening after spending the day seeing how the maharaja lived at the palace in Mysore. Wow!
During the bus ride I watched Bollywood movies… while I couldn’t understand Hindi, Bollywood movies are so overacted and dramatic that it’s pretty easy to figure out what’s up.
Cloé looks at her watch and announces that we only had about forty five mins until we arrived. So we both polished off our snacks and water. And of course have to use the toilet shortly after… but Indian busses don’t have toilets, so we gotta wait til we reach Bangalore. No problem, we are almost there! So we thought! Dummies we are, we had somehow decided it was only a two hour bus ride instead of the three it actually is.
Doh!
As we rolled closer to Bangalore I suddenly recalled a handy tidbit of info that I read during my research in the months previous… that I of course, had totally forgotten about until that moment when you realize how urgently you need to pee!
Bangalore has the worst traffic jams in India. And we were smack dab in the middle of rush hour. Guess we should spent the extra 150 rupees ($3) a ticket to take the train! It’s growing faster then the municipality can keep up. The main road into town is completely torn up from construction for the new metro line. It took 15 mins to drive 5km. Now how badly do we have to pee!
As we pull into a station we were contemplating if we could quickly pop out to pee before the bus moved onto the station we were headed to. Almost immediately as soon as we stopped the driver starts barking as us to “get off madame”. Confused, but unable to do much as it is the end of the line we disembark and dash for the toilet. Relief! One problem solved! But now… were the hell are we?!
We were going to be staying with a friend of a friend who lived there and he had emailed clear directions on how to get to his from Majestic Bus Station – where this bus was supposed to be taking us. Luckily Rajesh answered his phone when I called him. I am so freaking glad Swetha’s dad sorted out a SIM card for my phone! Problem number two solved! With the help of a nice bus dude at the ticket booth we make our way to the proper station via the Station Transfer Shuttle Bus. Obviously.
We arrived at his lovely neighbourhood (aka no ceaseless honking) and were warmly greeted. Our needs at that moment in time were simple: a shower to remove the sweat that 37°C cakes on your body and a bloody stiff drink!
Within an hour our awesome host had us sat at the bar of one of the hippest joints in town!
The rest was a bit of a blur… but damn son, it was fun!
Next up: Hampi. Google it if you haven’t heard of it… and know that I’ll be watching the sunset from the top one of the oldest temples in India tomorrow!
Always the storyteller. Sound great Jennifer. Love you as always , G