Bangalangalore

In between the two weeks of summer camp, my group and I took a weekend trip to Bangalore. It was an interesting trip....

We ended up taking a 12 hour non-ac bus ride through Friday night into early morning Saturday. Can I just tell you how much you should not do that? I think what was so terrible about it was that I felt like ripping off all of my clothes if there was ever a second where there wasn't a slight breeze wafting over my body. And that happened pretty often. And then when it came to sleep I wasn't able to recline my seat all the way because the dude behind me had his child on his lap. Fortunately for me, I am small in size so I was mostly able to curl up like a kitty in my seat, but it wasn't ideal. Oh, and if you had to potty you had to wait until the bus made a stop, and there were no guarantees of it being where there was a restroom. Luckily I woke up when they were refueling, so I was able to take advantage of my first paper towel-less squatter toilet. It was just like peeing in nature. nbd.

Bangalore was a beautiful city. If you weren't aware, it's the city where all the over-the-phone jobs are outsourced. And it's known to be the technologies center of India. Anyways, it was a very clean city with lots of trees and fresh air. Or at least more fresh than Hyderabad. When we arrived we found ourselves in one of the most ridiculously crowded bus stations I've ever seen. It was basically busses on busses on busses all lined up next to each other. Weaving through them was kind of nerve wracking as I nearly got squished by one or two of them.

For the rest of the day we cruised the city, hit up the pool at my hotel (where about 11 dudes across the way were staring at us from their balconies), rode the metro, and finished the night off with some TGI Fridays (where every night is a  bumpin techno dance music Friday).

The next day was our last day in Bangalore so we wanted to do something kewl. And that kewl thing was driving out to see Mysore Palace where we were to ride elephants and camels and enjoy a fancy tour of the palace. It was a three hour drive out so we had to leave early to make out 8 o'clock bus back to Hyderabad. We left around 9:30 but got there a little later than we expected due to a flat tyre.

The palace grounds were pretty cool.  I can’t give any interesting facts about the place, but it was a beautiful. I actually got in cheaper than the rest of my team because I was Indian. I've never used my brown skin to my advantage before so that was cool. But we rode elephants and camels, and it turns out that the bathrooms cost money to use! I guess that's what most places do....It was fun riding the elephant though. The dude that was giving us the ride let us sit on it’s head to take pictures for a lovely fee of 50 rupees. That’s like a dollar…..so we did. The texture of the skin is such a weird thing. I don’t know why I was expecting something relatively soft, but that was not the case. It’s skin was tough and it’s hair stiff. Such an impressive animal.

After the elephant ride we hit up the camels which was neat (kinda like ridding a horse) and then we cruised what was cruisable of the palace. So much gold and beautiful architecture. It was so different compared to Blenheim Palace (I visited there when I was in England)….but kinda blows my mind know that people live in places like that.

 

Anyways, It was getting late after we toured the palace and we didn’t want to miss our buss back home, so we took off. On the way home our driver randomly pulled over deciding that that was the perfect time to fix the tire that had blown out earlier that day. It was pretty frustrating because we didn’t know what he was doing until he got the process going so we sat there for a good 30-40 minutes waiting on him. It nearly made us miss our bus which was insanely stressful. Just trying to figure out where we even really needed to be for the bus was ridiculous.

That’s just the way things go here in India. You never really know what to expect. Like how when we boarded the bus, we found out that two busses were combined into one because one of them went out of service. So some people didn’t have seats and slept on the floor. By God’s grace most of my team, except my country director Ben, had a seat. It was nutso. But the ride home was fine as I was actually able to get some good sleep....All was well for Meera in the land of India.

 All is well for Meera in the land of India. And that's all for Bangalore.