Bangalore's Finest - 01/03/13

Enjoying our coconuts

BEN - The hotel offers a complimentary Indian breakfast from 7-10 AM, which we completely missed.  Sleeping in felt incredible.  When we finally roused ourselves, we made our way down to the travel desk where we talked with a helpful woman about Bangalore's tourism.  We decided to hire the hotel's car and driver for 6 hours to show us some sites in the city.  We met our driver, Rafish, who spoke good English (and 8 other languages) and was very knowledgeable about the area.  HE told us about Bangalore, a city of 6 million people that has grown exponentially in the past 10 years due to the influx of the IT industries.   If you've called customer service and been diverted to India, you have talked to someone here.  Bangalore went from the 6th largest city in India to the 2nd. With this growth Bangalore is experiencing typical 'little town turned big-city' problems.  We also soon realized that it is not really a tourist destination.

We drove through the madness to reach our first stop for the day, the Bangalore Palace.  This was a giant, very European looking castle that used to house sultans, and apparently still houses someone from the royal lineage.  There was an audio tour that our driver told us to listen only to what we wanted to.  We buzzed through and saw the different ornate rooms and furniture (some made of elephant parts) and eventually made our way outside to walk through the gardens a bit.  We saw a giant bird perched and I asked our guide what kind it was.  He casually replied "an eagle," apparently they are very common here.  The sun was hot, so we returned to the car.  Both Gabby and I were hungry, so we asked our guide to recommend some food for lunch.  He took us to an out of this world Indian place where we had some of the best naan, mango lassies, and chicken tikka masala I've ever had.

Our next stop for the day was Bangalore's Botanical Gardens, a huge plot of manicured lawns and gardens smack dab in the middle of the polluted madness.  We strolled through the park as Rafish answered our questions about this and that.  The place was nice, but not exactly that unique of different than a park in the states.   I would have appreciated it more had we packed a lunch and just spent the day relaxing there.  It was also stiflingly hot.  The highlight for me was as we walked down one path, a pack of monkeys appeared.  We freaked out and started taking pictures and ooing and ahing at how close we were.  Rafish looked at us like we were aliens.  Apparently monkeys are pretty common too.

Bangalore Palace

During our drives from site to site, Rafish would stop at silk shops (all very fancy) which had some beautiful merchandise; rugs, clothes, pashminas, etc.  Everything was 100% cashmere.  As soon as the shop owners realized we were American, they would pull out the most expensive stuff they had.  This quickly became very frustrating.  We ended up buying a few gifts and Gabby even bought a beautiful, traditional silk Indian tunic.

We continued on to see the Bull Temple, the second largest Hindi bull in the world.  We had to remove our shoes and pay a small donation to walk into the ornately carved and colorful temple.  He we were blessed and each got a bindi (the red dot on our foreheads) as well as a flower to place on the temple somewhere.  The temple was very beautiful and had a mystical feel about it.  On our way out of the temple, we passed a guy selling coconuts.  These were not the traditional, brown-fuzzy-Hawaiian coconuts you would imagine; they were amorphous green coconuts.  The driver asked if we would like to try one, and we each sampled the treat.  The vendor took a large machete and carved a small hole for us to sip from with a straw.  The coconuts hold a surprising amount of liquid, and the juice was sweet and refreshing.  After we had sucked the juice down, the vendor split the coconut in half and carved us a little bowl and spoon from the shell with which we ate the slimy inside.  This was not as tasty, but a cool experience none the less.

Our final stop for the day was an ancient sultan's summer home.  The place was very peaceful and pretty tourist free.  We stood on the balcony where the king would listen to villager's requests and concerns and felt the cool wind blow through.  Not a bad spot for an office.  That concluded our 6 hours with Rafish, so we headed back to the hotel.  Since we still have some time in Bangkok we will probably use him again tomorrow to drive us around.  The whole day with him had cost us R1500 (about $30).  When we returned we had a nice at Aromas of India, flavorful and delicious once again before heading back to our wonderfully comfy bed.  We had a successful and fun first day in India by my standards.