One of the best books we've both read on this trip, White Tiger is part set in Bangalore, the IT capital of India. Apparently it´s all high rise plushness in some parts of the city. We only got to hang out by the bus station though as we stayed only long enough to break up our journey to Hampi. Horrible hotel, lovely dinner, and that was pretty much our Bangalore experience.

We took two trains from Bangalore changing in Guntakal headed for Hospet. We were only on the platform for about 15 minutes but we were certainly centre of attention. A fully grown man approached Steve and asked for his autograph, we assume solely on the basis that he is white as the Bollywood film we´re in is not out yet. A pen was provided and with no paper in sight the man got Steve to sign his hand. It´s just weird, what´s he going to do, not wash it!! Steve then got him to sign his palm, when in Rome. This was all done in front of about 30 men who came to watch, one of course also got an autograph, he was a policeman at Bombay airport for Pete's sake.

Travelling in a different class of carriage on the trains makes a whole world of difference to your experience. On our final leg of our train journey to Hampi we were in with the chickens and had peoples feet hanging into our faces and Steve shared a single seat with another bloke. Crowded, frantic and not something we would choose to do for a long journey. Paying more for your seats gave us a different kind of irritation though. Our 8 hour leg of the journey from Mysore to Guntakal was 3AC, so the 3rd best carriage you can get and air conditioned, with everybody getting their own seat. We were sharing our 6 man carriage with two quiet men from Africa who were here on a work conference and seemed nice enough and we were also sharing with (and these are Steve's words) a Jabba the Hut lookalike who I though´t might have been an actor from Beadle's About. This woman came marching on, squashing me and the man on the other side so that she had space for her bag next to her, and continued for the rest of the journey to show how much more important she was than everybody else. She basically threw Steve off his seat opposite me as she "is left handed and need to sit there to be able to use the table" which folded up from underneath the window. She then unpacked all her lunch, forcing us to move our stuff off the table and sat munching away for about an hour (a right hander after all). She chucked her rubbish on the table, then proceeded to tell us where we had to go in India, all the while cleaning her ears out with a cotton bud, sometimes just leaving it poking out there, whilst telling us which towns we should visit. She obviously had no intention of giving her seat back to Steve, so the 3 of us sat opposite her while she got her sheet out and stretched out over all the seats on her side and started to snore. 2 hours of that and she decided that she was bored so decided to go through her mobile phone looking for a new ringtone. This was interspersed with abuse to the men and boys who brought tea and snacks through the carriage. I think we'd both rather sit with the chickens and deal with the smelly feet where the people are genuine who will give up there own seat so you can perch on the end.