Bangalore – Part 4

From a palace-like guest house to parliament buildings, from shopping on M.G. Road to Shiva Lingams, you’ve trusted this author to be your tour guide of Bangalore. But the story’s not over yet, for Bangalore’s parks were also waiting for us.

So on Sunday we saw a good deal of the “natural” part of Bangalore. But before seeing the park, we had a quick stop at (this was a coincidence, Aasthaa) the fort of Tipu Sultan. This thing was nowhere close to the size of Golconda Fort, but we did get a good look around the place.

I think that’s Tipu riding his horse in the shot below.

Next we moved on to some park I don’t remember the name of, which is good cause I didn’t take any pictures either. After that it was “Lal Bagh”, a park who’s name I remember but can’t spell correctly.

Apparently, it’s a “plastic-free” zone where “do’s” include paper bags and the “don’ts” include dogs. Hmm…

Great park, though. Big, open spaces…

…a good sized crowd…

…and, most importantly, helpful staff.

Not to mention the C.N. Tower of trees.

There was some “wonders of India” pavillion or something going on inside, so that’s where we cut through next.

Louis, as usual, showed us the way…

…Ahmed contemplated the mysteries of mechanics…

…and I just couldn’t believe what goes on inside pavillions these days.

And outside, for that matter. I’ll post safe pictures of the monkeys, but let’s just say that what these monkeys got up to later wasn’t exactly PG-13 – and leave it at that

The edge of the park brought us to the evening, and just about the end of our trip to Bangalore. Atop we found a great little temple…

…a reason to practice photography…

…a reason to test our balance…

…and a reason to just watch.

So we made our way out of the park, and back to our ghetto tour bus for a final ride back.

Then it was back to the guest house to meet up with Kartik, and Louis and I said goodbye to Kartik, Ahmed, and the city of Bangalore. A quick dinner at the most “authentic” Indian restaurant Lu and I have ever been to and a freezing bus ride later, we were back in Hyderabad for work on Monday morning.

Bangalore’s a good city, and seeing Ahmed & Kartik was great. Even if we had to stuff ourselves into an auto and ride ghetto mispelled tour buses to do it. I think we’ll be seeing em again soon.

Bangalore – Part 3

Where were we.

Oh, right. Bangalore. Day 2. Entry 3. The coops leave downtown disappointed on a Saturday night, vowing to make the most of the next day.

Sunday morning, we go our separate ways for the day. Kartik has some friends in Bangalore, so he heads off to see them, while Louis Ahmed and I head to the bus depot with the intentions of taking a day trip to somewhere scenic.

The bus depot is in a different part of Bangalore. Not quite as modern, a lot more busy, but still fairly nice.

We couldn’t get a bus to a nearby scenic destination like Nandi Hills or Shiva Ganga, so we stood at the bus stand for a few minutes feeling like the whole trip might be a waste.

The dude behind us in line was like a walking bus schedule, and he was the first to tell us that all the day-buses out of Bangalore leave super early. He then said he works for the international travel commisssion in India, and he owns a private tour company that just happens to have a Banaglore-wide bus tour leaving in half an hour.

Right.

We didn’t trust him. But we didn’t have much else to do. And for 90 rupees (< $3 Cdn) he was promising a tour of all of Bangalore, and furthermore his travel agency was just beside the bus depot. So we took a look.

Turns out he was the real deal. The ticket price was what he promised, the company was legit, and he actually does work for the government. Rock on.

15 minutes later our ghetto ride arrived. Here’s the view from the back…

… and here’s my travelling companions vowing to make the most of their 90 rupees.

The bus was ghetto, but the goal was high: all tourist spots in Bangalore in under 5 hours and for less than the price of dinner. No time to lose. No time to spell things correctly.

But we started out with major traffic jams. At first we thought the tour was just a drive around the block, because it took like an hour to get out of there.

But eventually our tour started…

…and we got a chance to go tourist-spot-hopping around Bangalore. From Holy places…

…to space races…

,..museums, office towers…

…gas stations…

Guess which of these attractions wasn’t really on the list.

We also got a flavour for the “natural” part of Bangalore, like the big city park…

But that’s a story for tomorrow folks, when we reach the thriling of conclusion of “coops in Bangalore!”. Notice the use of an exclamation mark to make it even more exciting.

As if it wasn’t exciting enough. G’nite

Bangalore – Part 2

In last night’s exciting recap of the weekend in Bangalore, I said our heroes did the following:

After exploring the parliament buildings and some nearby shopping areas, we came back to the guest house to relax a bit, then went out again for dinner and clubbing.

Okay Shawn, so my memory failed me just this once

We did more than that on Saturday, as my pictures reminded me today when I uploaded them to PhotoBucket. So anyhow, back to Saturday we go, leaving off from our visit to the Parliament Buildings.

After a fun argument with the auto rickshaw driver to prove that 60 + 30 does not in fact equal 100, our next stop was a hindu temple for Shivaji. Same idea as the big Ganesh ji in Hyderabad, just a different deity. Rock on.

What’s a temple without a big Ganesh ji to start you off though. So you’ll find him at the entrance:

And if you climb up to meet him, it turns out he’s pretty big in Bangalore too.

Inside you find the main attraction: people eating their lunch in the sun.

Well, that and a really big statue of Shivaji. Folks, what you’re seeing here is what only a few daring photographers are willing to capture. The amateurs back away at the sign of danger.

But not us. So how big is this statue? Well Kartik’s a big guy, so let’s use him for perspective:

Moving a bit closer, the view just gets better and better.

Crawl around the base and you get led inside a cave, where you’ll find the Shiva Lingams: symbolic references to Shiva Ji considered to be a supremely holy representation of God. I’ll leave you to go exploring for the spiritual side, I’ll just take care of the photos.

Ahmed took a whole bunch of shots inside the cave, you should find more on his blog.

Feeling spiritually satisfied, we made our way to Bangalore’s busy markets. Who knows what crazy shoppers you run into these days.

Since our coop salaries aren’t enough to pay for anything cool, Louis decided to get a quick part-time job delivering pizzas by scooter.

Or not.

Next stop was a restaurant close to Pizza Hut. We were hungry. We got food. Cheers to that.

M.G. Road, Brigade Road, Residency Road, and a whole bunch of other roads were what we trekked over next. Bangalore reminds me of downtown Toronto: totally multicultural, and lots of shopping.

Once in a while, you get direct reminders of home.

And plenty of signs that make no sense.

Of the signs that do make sense, the message is clear: Bangalore is not the place for trumpet players or adhesives. Watch out.

On our way back to the guest house we caught the beginning of the cricket-watching crowd leaving the India-Australia test match of the day.

We didn’t have much luck sneaking in to the stadium, but at least Kartik had his dream come true: a photo with an authentic Indian cricket fan.

Can you FEEL the excitement in the kid’s face?

Anyhow, that takes us back to the end of last night’s blog, and now we’re all through with Saturday. Tonight Louis and I are off to Mainland China (the restaurant) to take a break from burning our mouths with South Indian food. Instead we’ll burn with South Indian food diguised as Chinese food.

(Aside for Tuffy: “Arey… we have to eat the damn thing you know!”)

Tomorrow: the thrilling next episode of “Coops in Bangalore”. Hold on to your Shiva Lingam.

Bangalore – Part 1

You probably know by know that our buddies Ahmed and Kartik are the other two Waterloo coops working for TCS. They’re in Chennai. We’re in Hyderabad. And this past weekend, we were all in Bangalore.

That’s right, we decided to give exploring our towns a break and start seeing the rest of India. Now, I could stay at work for a few hours and talk about our whole weekend, but 115 pictures and paragraphs later we’d both be Bangalored-out. So how about little bits at a time throughout the week. Sounds good?

So Louis and I decided to bus over to Bangalore with “Gee Pee” travels. We didn’t just pick it for its awesome name, because for about $15 Cdn Gee Pee hooked us up with a sweet coach bus there.

There was another travel company that I wanted to go with (for their obviously cool name) but they were all booked up.

It was a semi-sleeper coach, meaning we take a nightime ride on seats that lie almost flat. The movie they showed was “Tumsa Nahin Dekha”, which was a movie that focused so hard on finding a beautiful lead actress that it forgot to work on minor other details like the plot, other characters, setting, direction, etc.

Eventually our eye candy was over, we got some sleep, and got to Bangalore’s “Anand Rao Circle”. Note to Indian auto rickshaw drivers: one thing you don’t want to do is bug a sleepy Louis at 7 in the morning.

Auto driver: “Rickshaw chayaa?” (Want a taxi?)

Me: “Nahi yaar, pas me janahai” (No man, we’re heading closeby)

Auto driver, 5 more times: “Rickshaw chayaa?”

Louis, turning around, staring down the dude: “NO!”

Leaving behind a bunch of dumbfounded auto drivers, We walked over to the railway station and met up with Kartik and Ahmed. Man! I can’t tell you the feeling of seeing someone from home after such a long time. Tears well up in your eyes. The Canadian national anthem starts playing in your head. Maple syrup starts pouring from the sky.

Well, maybe

The four of us found a cabbie we liked and made our way to drop our stuff at the TCS guest house, our resting spot for Sat night. TCS has guest houses, just like the one we stay in Hyderabad, all over India, and they’re nice enough to even let their coops use em.

Okay, maybe not EXACTLY like the place in Hyderabad, but it’s a difference I can live with

In the afternoon we headed out to downtown Bangalore to see their parliament buildings and other government centres.

The seating capacity of an auto rickshaw is 2 passengers. I wonder if we pushed it a bit.

Kartik doesn’t seem to happy with the idea.

Ahmed and I are cool with it. Louis seems content in just making me a nose-picker.

Anyhow, now I know why the government doesn’t get enough done – they probably spend all their time staring at where they work. At least I would.

This is their Legislature building.

Can you read the inscription on the building? (click on the pic below to enlarge it) Kind of an ironic thing for a government building to say, but I guess it absolves them of any responsibility

This is the High Court office.

This is Louis happily getting arrested.

This is us wanting in too.

After exploring the parliament buildings and some nearby shopping areas, we came back to the guest house to relax a bit, then went out again for dinner and clubbing.

Or at least that was the intention. For a city that’s known for its nightlife, we didn’t have much fun that night – because everything closes at 11:30! So we had to be content with ending Saturday with a good dinner, and went home feelin kinda down about that. But I think by now we’re pros at making the most of a trip, so tomorrow I’ll tell you what we did on Sunday to make up for it. Til then, g’nite folks.