3/4 January, 2019 – On the Road to Bangalore 

Yes, we are off on our travels again and I am typing this from our fabulous room in the fabulous Oberoi Hotel in Bangalore or, to give it its correct modern (and pre-colonial) name, Bengaluru.

We had a nice flight with BA, though we were an hour late departing first due to a minor problem I think getting one of those airport trucks to push us back and then one of the passengers was ill, which meant they had to call a medical team who decided she was not fit to fly and had to take her and her luggage off the plane. I could have told them before she boarded as she seemed very peculiar while we were waiting in the lounge, as though she was suffering the effects of drugs. Still, a minor inconvenience and better safe than sorry. We had 3 seats to ourselves so could spread out a bit and make ourselves comfortable while getting down to the serious matter of movie watching.

We landed late in Bangalore (6.00am), but were met by Pandi, our driver for the trip, who did not give a very good first impression by being unable to get the car out of the car park and could we loan him 50 rupees! I suppose these things happen, but he also had a bit of difficulty finding the hotel, so we are not overflowing with confidence.

Lovely hotel, massive room and they even let us have breakfast on arrival, which was good and Val immediately cornered the chef who brought out a plate of goodies, which made her very happy (though she may not look it in the photo, probably because I was stopping her from tucking in) and got us off to a great start. We then needed sleep, though Val, my Duracell bunny, still found time to go to the gym, before a little afternoon snack, a walk around the garden and a bit of rest time before heading out to find a restaurant for supper.

Val enjoying her breakfast on our first day.

Front of the hotel

Fabulous tree in the garden of the Oberoi Hotel, Bangalore.

Oberoi pool

Stunning rain tree.

This we did by walking along MG Road (MG as in Mahatma Gandhi – there is one in every Indian city), which is one of the main thoroughfares of this bustling city. Bangalore has quadrupled in size in a very short time to something like 12 million people as it has become the IT capital of India. It is known as the Garden City, due to some very large parks (more on them soon) and is home to some big army and air force bases, which give the city a more spaced-out feel to it with wide roads and plenty of big rain trees shading the roadside. The traffic is the usual Indian magic of tuktuks, buses, cars, motorbikes and the odd cow all managing to convert 3 lanes into 6 and showing off their prowess of judging time, space and movement down to their last millimetre. Not for the faint-hearted and we had to be bold just to cross the road, but we have been well trained on our travels and it was no worse than Hanoi.

A lovely dinner of South Indian food and then we made our way back to the hotel through the traffic, making sure we did not trip over the pavement or garrotte ourselves on the dangling electric wires. We were both impressed by how clean the city centre is, with no one sleeping rough and largely ok pavements, at least by Indian standards. It was a big improvement on Mumbai. And so to bed and an attempt to catch up on the jet lag.

Time to get at least one blog posted…. more soon.