Bengaluru is yet another place that the Brits renamed for no obvious reason. The name was finally changed back to the original one in 2006. Personally I think Bengaluru sounds nicer than Bangalore anyway, but we still haven't found out what the actual justification for any of the name changes were in the first place. Bengaluru was not an obvious tourists destination, with totally insane traffic and the associated pollution. The city's infrastructure is also barely able to keep up with the requirements of this booming IT town, known for being the centre of the Indian outsourcing revolution.
The IT factor was part of the reason I was curious to visit the place. Although I insisted on referring to it as 'my spiritual home', we actually found it a total nightmare to locate a decent internet cafe, and failed to find a single place with working wifi. Bloody outrageous. I was quite fascinated to read about the Infosys campus though, one of Bengaluru's biggest IT success stories. The company was started in 1981 by seven Indian software engineers, and today has over 66,000 employees. The self contained campus (sadly not open to the public) is filled with shiny glass and steel buildings surrounded by immaculately trimmed lawns tended by automatically sprinklers. The workers all saunter around in electric golf carts or cycle, while the real India honks it horns on the rammed highway just outside the gates.
Bengaluru did have a number of interesting diversions for us to visit though, so after catching up on our sleep we hailed a rickshaw and asked to be taken to the Lalbagh Botanical Gardens, which the lonely planet described as rivalling Kew Gardens in London. To be honest, we couldn't quite imagine it was going to be that amazing, and it was quickly apparent that it was definitely lacking a certain amount of love.
Initially we tried to enter the parched looking rose garden only to be quite literally chased off by two attendants who moments before had looked like they were fast asleep. Next we checked out the lily pond, which sadly was partially filled with old plastic water bottles. The cactus garden was also closed to the public, even though it looked like there was a decent collection in the padlocked greenhouse.
We did manage to find the enormous but empty dovecote. Clairy said her mum would have liked this for the garden in Woolavington.
One thing that very much did impress was the collection of large well-labelled trees from around the world. This striking variety of monkey puzzle tree had all its needles located on clumps on the end of its branches.
The fruit on this elephant apple tree native to both India and Java were absolutely huge. Not sure if they were edible though.
Clairy loved this yellow flowering tree from Madagascar. There seemed to be a large number of interesting species that originated there.
A slightly sad looking monkey bin. Not that many people seemed to be using them, there was still a fair amount of litter about.
We did eventually stumble on the topiary garden, and it proved to be my favourite part. Check out this top quality mouse.
This, I decided, was an inspired bit of work called 'dead pigeon (legs in the air)'.
Now, in my opinion, using a metal frame is kind of cheating when it comes to the fine art of 'pure topiary', particularly when they've hardly bothered to plant any shrubs either. Even the metal frame looks like it was designed by someone who has never seen an aeroplane.
This one was so odd, I had to have my piccy taken with it. Nice finger work though.
Next to the topiary garden was this incredible specimen. It is a Silk Cotton Ceiba, originating in India and China. You can just make out the tiny Clairy underneath it.
A view from the side of the same tree. What a beast!
Beside the topiary garden was - wait for it - A frangipani tree garden - Oh my god! Clairy was in heaven. This shot doesn't really show it, but there was a whole range of varieties.
Fortunately Clairy carefully documented the different types.
Beautiful. She liked the various arrangements of flowers on the ends of the branches as well as the differing colours.
Scorchio!
After leaving the botanical gardens we headed back to the Mahatma Gandhi Road (MG Rd) area and walked up to Ulla's Refreshments, a cheerful little place on a nicely planted terrace up above the chaos of the traffic. I went for the lovingly prepared South India Thali...
...and Clairy had the North Indian Thali. They were both bloody gorgeous and we returned here again over the next couple of days.
Some kind of metro was in the process of being built, and we gazed at the vast concrete structures going up around town.
Finally, an active metre in a rickshaw! Only after two days and a good ten rickshaw rides did we finally get a driver who agreed to use the metre (which by law they are supposed to) rather than plucking some excessive sum out of the air for the unknowing tourists to cough up.
On the following day we made our way to the central city market. This is also the main Muslim area of the city, and there were a number of beautiful mosques around. The first part here also seemed to double as a bus station resulting in some pretty hairy bus-on-stall-owner interactions.
Clairy snapped some spectacular pics as we attempted to find the central fruit and veg area.
Tasty succulent-looking pomegranates.
Clairy asked this chap behind the counter if she could photo his display of pigments used for religious purposes, but he looked doubtful. Then another chap asked if he could help, and turned out to be the owner of the shop. He chided the chap behind the counter and said she could take as many pics as she liked. He asked where were from before regaling his family story. He was immensely proud to tell us that his family contained no less than 17 doctors, most of whom practised in Liverpool in the UK. I let him know that I went to university there, but this conversation was definitely about him, so I didn't take it to heart when he completely ignored me.
Hessian sacks used for a vast array of purposes.
Eventually we found the purpose built market that contained a huge flower section on the basement floor. After snapping a nice pic from down below...
...we moved to the floor above where she took these gorgeous shots from over the balcony.
The awning arch frames this one beautifully.
These two chaps were moistening the flowers that they had attached to the bamboo frame to create this lovely piece.
Dooogy. Found some tasty water that isn't mainly human effluent. What a loooky boooger.
A slightly sheepish look. 'Sorry, was that yours?'
We both love the tin and steel shops. Such great equipment, lovingly displayed.
After the market we decided to go get some lunch. Quite often in the middle of the constant horn hammering, savage revving and general shouting you would find these calm beasts trotting along, or waiting patiently in a queue.
A very uncomfortable looking harness. Understandably the poor bugger looks pretty grumpy.
Our restaurant of choice today was the Bengaluru institution known as the Mavalli Tiffin Rooms (or MTR for short). It was first opened in 1823, and had fascinating old photos lining the walls. This next set of pics are dedicated to Pete Gotto from chilly old England who said he enjoyed our food based fun. This was definitely right up there, if not at the top of our edible experiences. Clair assures me the chap was just on the phone in the picture and wasn't doing anything else disgusting.
Their set South Indian Thali started with about seven small dishes, popadoms and rotis, which was then followed up with a seemingly endless parade of additions dolloped out from large stainless steel buckets.
Just when you thought you were coming to the end of it all, another round of dishes would be served up, we counted fourteen in all.
It just kept on coming, until we had to say no more, at which point they finished it off with a fruit salad and ice-cream. Perfect.
With the ice-cream, we were also given a little tobacco leaf package of paan. This is made up of betel nut and other spices, and is chewed (and spat out in disgusting red streaks of spittle) by almost everyone, so I had to have a try. It tasted quite similar to the betel nut I had eaten in the Solomon Islands, but the fresh tobacco leaf made it pretty rancid and I had to get rid of it surreptitiously in a napkin.
Back at our thoroughly decent accommodation, the Empire Hotel, Clairy snapped this typically authoritative yet helpful message on the wall beside the lift.
For our final night in Bengaluru we headed to the cinema to watch Slumdog Millionaire. We had read a bit about it, and both really enjoyed it. I was concerned that it might be a bit too much of a feel-good effort, but it was genuinely quite brutal in places, and didn't try to gloss over the harsh realities of life in the slums of Mumbai. We've since read more about it in the Indian press, and it has come in for quite lot of criticism, particularly when compared to Salaam Bombay, an Indian directed film that covers quite a lot of the same ground. That is one I definitely would like to see in the future.
On our way back we spotted this hilariously itchy dooog, rubbing himself vigorously on the posh red carpet of an upmarket coffee shop. We both found this really funny.
The next morning we were booked on the short train journey from Bengaluru to Mysore. It would only take three and a half hours, and we were booked in a seated carriage for the first time. In the station we snapped a pic of one of the rather odd machines we had read about in the superb book 'the white tiger', that Bendad had sent over with Caper. They seem to be on every platform of every station throughout the entire country. You stand on the scales, pop your 5 rupees in and it prints out not only your weight, but also your fortune. We haven't actually tried one yet, but I'm sure I'll be tempted at some point.
Loving the London underground style station motif. So very familiar.
And along came our train, right on time. Quite the opposite of trains in Britain!
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