Blog : Bangalore

We arrived to Bangalore City Junction station in a bit of a rush, I'd literally woken up ten minutes earlier and as the stop wasn't the end of the train we had to get off pretty quickly, which isn't as easy done as said, with four big backpacks between us and another four day sacks, plus more passengers in the way and we were all starving! The station was absolutely massive but we managed to find the luggage counter, that our Juice shack boy had told us about as we left out big bags there, sans valuables for the day, before our next train that evening which would take us finally to Hospet. We were all prepared to bar the men down as they tried to rip us off (Juice shack boy had warned us) but it was fixed price and rs15 for 24h per bag, which is about 25p - incredible in comparison to the £10 for a half day locker in Marylebone station at home!! We jumped into a cab and got him to take us to a restaurant we'd found in LP that sounded like it would have a clean toilet and do relatively normal food. It was in the 'ex-pat' area of the city, which looked quite swanky really but as we got there we saw the restaurant was closed until midday - it was about ten thirty and we were climbing up the walls with hunger. We went over the road and sat in Cafe Coffee Day, the Indian Starbucks, which we vowed we wouldn't go back into ever because everything we'd ever had from the chain had made us poorly or was really rank. But there we were. I ordered a Pomegranate ice tea, thinking it was impossible Togo go wrong with but blimey it ha so much sugar in it, it was disgusting and I couldn't even drink it! We sat in the upstairs lounge area and as we were preparing to wait an hour and a bit, we made ourselves at home, settling down in front of Nelens laptop to watch a couple of episodes of the Inbetweeners, which was hilarious!

Once Sunnys, the restaurant we wanted to go to, was open we dashed back across the road and sat down, looking like complete hobos in our already 24 hour old and smelly clothes. We couldn't have looked less like the usual clientele, but as we were the first in, we weren't to know how posh the place really was until we looked at the menu, which was still deceiving as tax and service was not included in the prices. I ordered a veggie burger and the girls salads and pasta, none of us fancied Indian food. It was when the girls relatively expensive salads came out and were the size of acorns that we realised we were in one of 'those' places. My burger came and was a good size which i was happy about AND was actually tasty! I think everyone had envy eyes on, as their salads and pastas were teeny tiny! Nelen chose to have a beef burger, which she was disappointed with, but I kept teasing her about being so naughty eating cow in India and it was her karma! We made full use of the clean toilet in the restaurant and stoke all the toilet paper for later in the day and so although we were shocked when the bill came and shock horror it was £8 or so each(!) we had got our money's worth! We decided to go a bit further up the road from the restaurant to catch a tuktuk, as we thought coming out of an expensive place was asking to be ripped off! It was a bit cooler in Bangalore than in Kerela but standardly I still had a sweat on! We headed towards Raja Market in Chickpet, which Victoria my cousin had recommended. She'd told us it was a great place to buy gold so we all got very excited about the prospect of new jewellery, but as one shopkeeper told us 'Indians are like magpies, they like shiny things' and the 22 carot gold, the only quality that is sold basically anywhere in India, was way to yellow, shiny, garish and expensive, even though the colour made it look really cheap. We wandered around quite a few jewellery shops and the the girls found a few bits and bobs that they liked but nothing for me :(

I was in one of those hot and bothered moods and annoyed that I couldn't find what I wanted, even though I'd thought it was a pretty simple request - 18carot, matt finish and in a traditional Indian style. We carried on wandering around the market for a little bit, Nelen managed to buy her friend all of the wedding bags she wanted, after much deliberation over colour and size. And we saw another bustling Indian market, which we've loved throughout the country, but we were beginning to think that all of the markets were starting to look a bit same same. I think we were all quite exhausted from the travelling and not really sure what we wanted and in the end we thought f*** it we'd jump in a tuktuk and head over to the smart shopping centre - Mathri Mall and enjoy some air conditioning, no hassling and normal shops! On the way we passed a fight going on, the first we'd seen throughout India! It looked like two hobos arguing over a cucumber at a side of the road vegetable stall. One man was holding the other by his neck as we drove by and then a grubby lady got involved then throwing some punches and finally clocking the strangler on the was with the offending cucumber!! It was all very dramatic and although we found it funny at the time, it was very strange to see any kind of violence, as India felt so passive as a country. But anyway, we got to the shopping centre and the tuktuk driver tried it on with us, trying to charge us an extra fare, which annoyed us and we ended up having a bit of a pop at him ourselves and he wouldn't take the money that we'd already agreed to, so we shoved the additional few rupees into his hand saying we were giving it to him with bad feeling, which Victoria later told us was very offensive to Indians - good! We wandered around the mall a bit, found it quite surreal to see shops like Marks and Spencer's, and decided we wanted to blob in a coffee shop for a bit of a rest and then a pick me up! On the way law and I nipped into a sports shop as I wanted to just see the price of the converse trainers in the window out of interest - they were soooo cheap! Like I mean such a good deal! We could t believe it! At home the style I was looking at are £45+ but these genuine high tops were £13!!! It seemed too good to be true... Kate had found a pair she liked as well and we had to go and find the other two girls to have them give the shoes a once over for authenticity! We got Al and Nelen's nod of approval and so brought ourselves a pair of trainers each! Thinking about it, they were such a random purchase but brilliant as I had a new pair of converse on my shopping list for home already! We flaked out in KFC in the end as everyone's legs were about to fall off and we knew we were meeting my cousin Victoria, Sudhir and their new baby Aadya pretty close by at an arranged time.

Vic and Sudhir took us on. Little tour of their favourite area of Bangalore, the old quarter, which had beautiful ancient buildings and huge old trees in and amongst the newly built office complexes and road side shops. We walked along the main road and past some lovely ornate temples and we chatted about how everyone in the family was and all the places we'd been in India so far. Victoria said she was really impressed that we'd made it to the market earlier as its apparently not somewhere that all of the locals brave, but we had! We went into the oldest temple in the state, which had been buried for years and excavated only a hundred or so earlier. It was stunning and really felt sacred. We took our shoes off before we entered and happened to have turned up right at the time of the daily puja ceremony. The bells were being rung and lots of people were sitting around the small pool with turtles in, in the open air step area. It was really beautiful inside with a gold statue of a cow spouting water, which was sat over a natural spring. We stepped outside after a few minutes as we didn't want to intrude too much and Aadya didn't like to noise too much. Sudhir was outside in their little five seater car and we managed to cram all four of us girls plus the baby chair on the back seat, and we drove to a really smart restaurant in a swanky area. Very kindly they'd offered to take us all out for dinner and having lives off continental food for the last few days in Kerela we were really excited to try some good Indian again!

Sudhir did the ordering for everyone. The usual way to dine is to order a couple of dishes for the table rather than having a main course each as you would at home. He did well, ordering a selection of spicy and non spicy for he, Victoria and Kate; we tried Chaat, small wafer ball things, filled with spice, chickpeas and raita yogurt (which is grossly called curd here) with sprinkled crunchy something on the top, which are mostly famous in Mumbai, but that we'd not tried. We also had tandoori paneer which was so spicy but delish and little curled up fried baby corn slices which I could have demolished in an instant if we didn't have to share them round! I was surprised Sudhir and Victoria didn't really like any spice at all in their food, when we've been travelling the country looking for some really hot dishes! But we supposed after a while it becomes more about the flavour and not so much about the rim sting! We then gobbled down a mixture of vegetable curries, rotis and naans. It was a really yummy yummy dinner and Al and I kept going until every dish was empty! I really enjoyed the daal and Victoria shared the family appetite so we didn't feel greedy! It was so lovely to spend some time with them and chat about family, about where to go in Hampi, our next stop and to play with baby Aadya, who was absolutely adorable and so good, she didn't cry once or cause any fuss.

We had cut time quite short and had to end our dinner quite quickly and hot foot it to the station to catch our next train. Sudhir had ordered us a taxi and we told the driver to get us to the station pronto. As I'd said earlier, Bangalore city junction was a massive station and bless him, the driver took us all the way to the seventh platform, as you could drive up to each one and he knew our Hospet train departed from this one. This was all good and well with 15 mins to spare, but we'd left our backpacks at the baggage drop hadn't we, which was now miles away at the other end of the station. Nelen and I legged it all the way to the desk, getting lost a little bit and sweating like anything. My trousers were round my knees and I was wheezing like an asthmatic! We grabbed our bags and ran back to the train, which was waiting on the platform, literally with what we thought was about two minutes to spare! We dived on any old carriage and walked through the aisles to find our seats, which were in the 3AC carriage, shared with two indian men. We sat down and all had serious indigestion, were dripping head to toe with sweat and all burping up sick in between panting having thought we'd been so lucky to make the train and not miss it. When we didn't move for a few minutes we all looked at each other with confused faces and the men must have read these and said or was running half an hour late... After all of that extertion, running, stress and feeling so terrible afterwards and the train wasn't going anywhere, we were f***ed off yes!