Thanks for your messages and for following us still. We have been without wi-fi for a while so we are catching up with loading blogs and photos, so keep checking the new stuff out! The bus trip to Bangalaore from Munnar was firstly a minibus to a lively town called Udumalaipet, then a non a/c sleeper (reclining seats) tourist bus - both costing us about £8.50 each. The route was amazing, setting off at around 16:30 we drove through the northern Munnar tea plantations and then through several wildlife parks, (tiger reserves, elephant reserves). The scenery was stunning, creeping up windy roads; we climbed then dived through forest and jungle as we left behind the beautiful tea plantations and the smells and cool air. Electric fences lined the road - keeping the wildlife safely in the parks. We spotted deer, bison and some exotic looking birds, but no tigers. The sun set behind us and we dozed the evening and night away while polluted hotter air blasted through the open bus windows. Bangalore is marketed as India's IT hub and it was our first big city in India. In our experience none of the malls, cafes restaurants or many of the hotels had wi-fi??? Bangalore had plenty of the things we expected from a big city, lots of cows and dogs on the roads, plenty of rubbish and crazy traffic. We arrived at around 5:30am and were greeted with the usual hubbub of autorickshaws keen to tout tuktuk and hotel. After the mandatory negotiations we were dropped near the Train Station and close to several (as we quickly found..) seedy joints - but all were full. We then hopped to the Empire International off Mahatma Gadhi Road and checked in to A/C luxury for 1 night! We had the included breakfast a day early then caught up with our sleep. We went to the Mahatma Gandhi Road area (every city has an MG road). This area was very western with shops, bars, hotels and restaurants. We had a really nice lunch and then a Subway (we are such tourists!) for our dinner before catching up with our free wi-fi and luxuriating in Air con (our first room with it) back at the hotel. As check out was 24 hours from check-in we had to leave our hotel at 06:30 - bummer. We dropped our cases off at the station cloak room for the day, grabbed a very cheap breakfast then signed up for a cheap half-day city tour as our time in town was limited. The tour was mainly for Indian tourists, a group of Indian men in cowboy hats and a few married couples. We visited Tipu Sultan's palace, Venkataraman (Hindu) temple, Lalbagh botanical park, the technology museum and the 'compulsory' sari shop. Many of the tourists we have met mentioned that they were constantly hassled to pose for photos; we hadn't been at all - until that day (the cowboys asked us to pose at the Hindu temple). The tour gave us a nice mix of stuff in a short time. We bailed out of the tour slightly early as I wanted to visit a cinema - our tour dropped us off at a mall which had one, but no english language films were on. We travelled to another mall - The Forum and were lucky enough to arrive in time for "The Hunger Games". The audience cheered and whistled at various parts of the film. The row of guys behind us talked incessantly throughout; we didn't mind... the film was so loud anyway - nearly reaching for the earplugs again. We got an autorickshaw back to the station. Whilst passing a fast food restaurant we had to do a double-take as we noticed a cow in the queue - waiting for fries presumably. The journey was a white-knuckle ride in the 33 degree evening heat with our driver speedily weaving in and out of the multiple lanes (actually 'lanes' sounds too organised) of traffic. Cows do not give way! We got to Bangalore City train station to catch our first 'sleeper' train at 22:00. On the train we had a curtained area with a pair of bunk beds, air-con and fan and a table. Although the bed was a bit hard we did manage to get a fair bit of sleep, the journey was pretty smooth. We arrived at Hospet at 08:00 for our next destination the ancient ruins at Hampi.