Bangalore

Indians have invented time travel! No flux capacitor needed here, just a Boeing 737-700 and a four hour odd flight from Guwahati transports you around twenty years to the future. This magical place has an airport with clean bathrooms, a spotless, modern taxi service with driver who insists on using the meter, and shopping malls with every worldwide brand you could think of (plus a few domestic ones that will be arriving in a city near you soon). In fact the only thing not modern about Bangalore is the name change Bengaluru which apparently means Town of Boiled Beans or something similar.

We touched down about 9.30pm from Guwahati (via Calcutta) and thanks to the aforementioned taxi we got into our budget hotel at about 10.30-11pm. Traffic here is supposed to be awful and seems we were lucky to make the 40km drive from the airport in decent time.

We stayed at a place on the ‘MG’ (Mahatma Gandi) road at a small place called Shree Lakshmi Comforts. So many roads in India are named after famous politicians and statesman, as may have unpronounceable names the roads inevitable get shorted to two or three letters.

In the dim evening light Sri Laksmi Comforts looked pretty grim. An outdated bathroom with ceramics in dulux’s ‘nicotine yellow’ and bedroom walls that detailed many a battle between flip flop and mosquito. While we are on the subject Indians believe bathroom tiles are self cleaning. Floors, showers and toilets all get cleaned (to a certain extent) daily, but tiles remain untouched, collecting an assortment of soap suds, water stains and bodily fluids such that they probably contain a comprehensive DNA database of each person that has stayed there. I am surprised that the Tate Modern has not snapped more of this stuff up.

The first of many beautiful bathrooms...

While the light of the new day did not add any shine to the bathroom it did make Sri Laksmi seem a whole lot more bearable. The common areas of the hotel were spick and span, there was fast, free wifi in the lobby and the location was excellent. Best of all, the staff were extremely friendly and their accurate and up to date knowledge of the cricket score was invaluable.

We only had one day in Bangalore so we spent it wandering around trying to get to know the city. The place seems great for shopping – we passed by dozens of antiquities, jewellery and homeware stores sadly our luggage capacity and budget meant that we avoided disappointing ourselves by walking on by.

Almost as good as the real Petra!

We found the Garuda mall which provides an exceptionally grand shopping experience (relative to what we have seen in India so far). Six floors containing big brands, a cinema, pubs and a huge food court.  If the retail therapy doesn’t cure your ills then you can try the spa on the fifth floor. There you can indulge in a ‘fish massage’ where hundreds of a little doctor fish nibble the dead skin off your feet or hands. Normally one whiff of my hot smelly feet would send any sane creature scarpering, but these little fellas came running (well swimming).  It is an unnerving experience, but after a while not an unpleasant one. The end result (and I get the feeling I might be on the verge of emasculating myself here) is wonderful – very clean looking feet and with all the old skin gone it is like walking on air.

Fish food

We walked back to the hotel after lunch just in time to watch India lose a brace of wickets in their match against South Africa. England were whipping Australian arse in the Ashes so it made chatting with the lobby staff double the fun.

Bangalore's new Metro

That evening we met up with Monali’s cousin who studies in Bangalore and his father who also happened to be in town. As we wandered down MG road we noticed Bangalore’s latest new toy ‘the metro’ which will hopefully make getting around this place a lot easier. They have actually set up a whole ‘dummy carriage’ so that people can interact with train before it starts operating. As we smugly wandered past thinking how smart we were that we can use an Oyster card without having to practice, it suddenly dawned that as much as this is a land of contradictions, India is making some really smart moves. Moves that we will all be thankful for 30 or 40 years in the future should we not wish to be dominated by a certain eastern dragon.