The train journey to bangalore was great. We had booked the tickets at a travel agent before – hastle free at a small commission charge. The tickets cost over 3 times as much as the previous train journey for the same distance. This was because we had reserved our seats and gone up a few classes to 2-Tier Air-Con. This means we each had a full bed for the night and probably the most comfortable nights sleep in india. The beds in most of the guest houses we have stayed in are a little hard. Each Compartment holds 2 lower and 2 upper beds. The lower ones are seats until around 19:00 when the ticket holder can turn them into a bed if they wish. So the three of us shared the compartment with an elderly Indian chap who tried to teach us a version of Rummy. He left in the night at a stop on the way and we awoke in Bagalore around six in the morning. After ignoring the taxi touts, who were trying to con us for 7 times the going price, we went to a ’Pre-Pay’ Booth at the Taxi stand. All the taxi guys were insisting it was shut/onstrike/burnt down but it was open and we hired a rickshaw to MG road (Mahatma Gandi Road – every towns main rd) for 30Rs not the 200 the taxi touts were quoting. We booked into a hotel on the MG road and explored Bangalore that day. A great place to do some shopping and stock up on a few essentials. We saw the Botanical gardens, got pelted by mango’s as they fell from the trees, and saw a replica of the Crystal palace built shortly after the original in London which now doesn’t exist. That night monsoon kicked in again and Bangalore got very wet so we ventured out only for a quick bite before turning in for the night. The next morning we deceided we’d had enough of Bangalore and jumped on a bus to Mysore. A nice suprise was the bus wasn’t a rickity old local one but a nice Super Duper Luxury Express which left 5 mins after we got to the bus station.