This past weekend I decided to go around Bangalore city, since I spent most of last weekend on the road to Mysore… I was told to go to the “Majestic” bus station, the railway station and city market. As I get out of the hotel, one stray dog adopted me as his owner and followed all of 3 blocks, waiting for me when I pause, and attracting the attention of other dogs, who looked and behaved a lot more aggressively than my newly acquired pet.
Anyway, one rickshaw ride later (and I did learn how to make the drivers use the fare meter and not try to abuse my foreignness..). I also figured out what the greatest contributor to stress in the city is: Horns! Car horns, rickshaw horns, bike horns, truck horns, bus horns. And as if they needed encouragement, the backs of trucks have “Sound Horn” printed in big capital letters on them..
Note: This post is supposed to be illustrated, but with my limited computing facilities here at the hotel, I will just post a new album on facebook for now.. Here’s a link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=470582&id=880525482&l=7918acc419
Anyway, the railway station was surprisingly quiet, and the trains were as long as I imagined them to be..
The bus station has the largest number of buses one will ever see in the same view.
City market, as the name suggests, is a very busy and not very maintained kind of place. Stores of the same feather stick together. The plumbing stores, then the electronics stores, then the paper stores, then the vegetable stands, etc etc etc. That was really a new face of the city.
I also went back to Lalbagh garden, where I was able to find peace last weekend, but this time, since it was independence day, the park was full of students from all kinds of schools, and they all wanted to strike a conversation with the bald stranger who looks like he hasn’t been in this place very long..
If I get to visit India again, I need to make sure that I have time to go around and discover more, since this trip seems to have been a bit too short to go outside the city and discover the rest of the country. A few days remain, but nothing fancy to expect, so this is probably my last post about India from this trip..
