Friday was a fun but hectic start to what turned out to be a really fantastic weekend. Work was pretty uneventful. We each did another assessment, and in general I felt much better about how that assessment went as compared to the one I did on Thursday. That is kind of a theme for me though –I always feel crappy about the first assessment I do at a new placement, and it always gets better after that. In any case, I think by the end of the day we were both really glad that it was Friday. It was kind of a long and not super exciting week. We are both getting a little bit bored of all of the observation and missing having our own caseload.
We had quite a few things to do on Friday evening to get ready for our trip to Bangalore, as well as going to a baby shower with Vijay and his family. Our first stop was to the Airtel office in Ascendas IT park to sort out our phone since it still wasn’t re-activated (that is whole different story – when we called customer service on our lunch break they were really rude and actually had the audacity to hang up on us). In any case, we discovered that the proof of address that we had submitted STILL wasn’t enough and that now we needed somebody from SPASTN with a Chennai address to fill out a form for us stating that we are who we say we are and we do indeed live at SPASTN. Bureaucracy at its finest. Obviously we didn’t get very far with that, since we needed to find somebody willing to fill out the form for us, but they did agree to temporarily reactivate our phone because we were going out of town for the weekend.
Vijay and his family were supposed to pick us up at 6:30, so by the time we got back to SPASTN we had just enough time to start packing for Bangalore and then get dressed for the evening. The baby shower was going to be held in a really fancy hotel, so we wanted to look our best. 7pm rolled around, and still no Vijay. Priyanka called him, and he assured us that he would be there by 7:20 or so. We had a lot of ironing to do from Wednesday’s laundry, but we didn’t want to start it because we didn’t think we’d have time to finish it before Vijay came. When Vijay and his family finally arrived to pick us up at 8:35, we were slightly irritated, not only because we would have had time to do our ironing after all, but it seemed like it was going to be a late night, and we had a 6am train to catch to Bangalore the next morning.
The hotel that the baby shower in was really new and fancy. I felt like I was in a hotel in down town Toronto! Unfortunately we had missed the ceremony of the baby shower, but we did meet the Mom-to be, and a lot of the other guests. The Mom-to be was wearing a huge amount of bangles on both of her wrists, and when we asked about it, we were told that it is a tradition for a first time Mother to be given bangles at the baby shower that she will wear until she delivers. The bangles jingle together, and the sound is supposed to be pleasant for the baby. I thought that was a really neat tradition!
One of the more awkward moments of the night came when I was introduced to friends of the aunt of the expectant mother. We had just met the aunt, when these two women in matching pink saris with large silver crosses around their necks walked up. The aunt grabbed my hand and said “I want to introduce you to the sisters” (It turns out they were nuns or something similar). One of them said something to me that I didn’t understand at all “Blraughahlg” and I leaned closer and said “I’m sorry?”. She repeats herself, but I still didn’t catch it so I said again “sorry, I didn’t understand”. She looks at me deadpan and says” that is my name”. Talk about awkward. I’m just glad that I didn’t say “I’m sorry I don’t speak Tamil”. Priyanka said afterwards that she had the hardest time not bursting into laughter because I had the funniest expression on my face. We also both thought it was curious (and kind of hilarious) that the aunt only introduced ME to the sisters and not Priyanka, but we’re pretty sure it has to do with the fact that I’m white, so she assumed that only I would be interested in meeting them. Anyways, like I said, it was really awkward at the time, but now all one of us has to say is “that is my name” and we start to laugh hysterically.
After the baby shower we headed back to our place, finished up our ironing and packing and headed to bed around midnight. We both knew it was going to be a short night but we were really excited for our trip!
SATURDAY
When our alarm went off at 3:30 am on Saturday morning we were not very impressed, needless to say, but we hopped out of bed anyways, to be ready in time for our call taxi to arrive at 4:30 am. Our train was leaving at 6am and we wanted to leave enough time to navigate the train station etc (and allow for any construction or traffic on the way to the station). Pleasantly, the taxi actually arrived on time, and it wasn’t long before we were on our way.
The train station was bustling despite the early hour (5:05 when we arrived), but surprisingly well organized, and it didn’t take us long to figure out where we were going. We hopped onto our train and settled in to our comfortable window and aisle seats. We had packed lots of food for the trip, because we weren’t expecting any kind of service on the train (based on our experience with VIA rail at home), but it wasn’t long before they came through the car with a big bottle of water for each person, a newspaper, and a snack. What awesome service! Not only that, but about an hour later they came through with a free, hot breakfast as well! We found out afterwards that we had taken a more luxurious train (hence the awesome service) but still, we were really impressed. All in all the train ride was a lot of fun – it was really neat to watch the Indian countryside roll by outside the window! We both slept for a little while on the train, and were feeling pretty chipper when we arrived in Bangalore at around 11am.
When we detrained, we were greeted by a cool, brisk (almost chilly!) breeze. Bangalore is at a higher altitude than Chennai, and thus has a much more pleasant climate. We set about trying to find an auto rickshaw to take us to our hotel. Immediately we were swarmed by auto drivers trying to entice us to go with them. It was pretty overwhelming. The first guy we asked wanted to charge us 140 INR, and although we weren’t totally sure how much it was supposed to cost us to get to our hotel, our scam-sensors were buzzing. Luckily, a good Samaritan eventually walked by and directed us in the direction of the prepaid autos. At prepaid auto stands you negotiate a fixed rate at a booth before you leave, and then you’re given a receipt that tells you exactly how much to pay the driver. We ended up paying 56 INR to get to our hotel – a much better deal than 140, that’s for sure!
We checked into our hotel around 11:30, and were shown to our large, air conditioned room. It was a nice change from our place in Chennai. The beds were springy and comfortable, and the pillows soft. The bathroom had a working shower head (although no tub) and they even included toilet paper!
We freshened up quickly and then set out to explore the city. Our first stop was the India Tourism office across the road where we picked up a city map (and also one for Chennai itself) and got some advice on what to visit. We decided to start with Cubbon park, and then go to look at the Vidhana Soudha (government building) and the Bangalore High Court.
Cubbon park is a beautiful (and very peaceful!) leafy green space, in the middle of the city. All of the trees inside are labeled with their genus and species in case you fancy learning about them. In the middle of the park is a big rock where there were a bunch of teenagers hanging out. There are also huge shoots of bamboo almost everywhere you look. I’ve never seen wild bamboo anywhere, let alone that tall.
When we finished walking through the park we were getting hungry, so we stopped into a nearby the Best Western Hotel to find out if they had a restaurant. We had a choice between a buffet lunch or the rooftop patio. We decided to take a look at the rooftop patio to see how pricy it was. When we got up there it was so gorgeous that we decided to treat ourselves (it actually didn’t turn out to be that expensive anyways – we ended up paying less than $10 CAD each). We were the only ones up there, so we got to pick the table with the best view of the city. Each table was shaded by its own ornately decorated gazebo. The servers were incredibly attentive, and did things like pull our chairs out for us, and place our serviettes on our laps. We felt incredibly special and spoiled. It was almost like being in the movies! The food was really good (although very spicy), and we spent a long time up there, just relaxing and enjoying ourselves. It was really great to unwind after our long week at work. We headed off to the Vidhana Soudha around 3pm, very full, but very happy.
You can’t actually go inside either the Vidhana Soudha or the High Court, but they are both very beautiful buildings, so we spent a bit of time taking pictures of the outside. When we finished it was only 4pm, so we caught an auto and headed out to the bull temple. Although not as ornate as the Kapalishvara temple in Mylapore, it was neat in its own right, because it has a giant iron (?) statue of a bull in it. On our way out we stopped at a little stand to browse, and Priyanka bought a few hand carved wooden stamps. The man that owned the shop even decorated our hands with henna (using his stamps) free of charge.
On our way to the Bull Temple we had seen the Lallbagh botanical gardens, so we decided to stop there before heading back to our hotel. The botanical gardens were also really nice. There weren’t many flowers blooming, but the collection of bonsai trees sculpted into interesting shapes was pretty neat. We also found the biggest tree that I’ve ever seen – its roots were enormous and totally dwarfed the people that were lounging at its base. We thought we’d found a really big tree in Cubbon Park, but this was the grandfather of all trees.
We had one strange thing happen to us in the botanical gardens. We were approached by an Indian family, one carrying a really large camera. They asked us to take a photo – at first we thought they wanted us to take a photo of them, but they shook their heads. Then we thought that they wanted a photo of us (we thought it might be because I’m white – I’d been getting a lot of stares that day), but that didn’t seem to be it either. Eventually we figured out they wanted US to take a photo of THEM with OUR cameras. We were thoroughly confused, but thought that they might be trying to sell us a photo of them. In any case, we walked away.
Although Bangalore is a much more Westernized, touristy city than Chennai, we found that in general, people were trying to take advantage of us being foreigners more so than in Chennai. Pretty much every auto rickshaw driver tried to rip us off, everyone was trying to sell us stuff or take us to a shop, and people were constantly staring at me. Even as we were going into the botanical gardens, Priyanka caught some guys staring at me, who then turned to their girlfriends, said something and laughed. It doesn’t bother me really, I could care less what they think. I am finding it interesting, and curious, being the minority for a change though!
Anyways, after the botanical gardens we headed back to the hotel to meet up with some more friends of Priyanka’s family, Bipin and his wife, Jayshree. Bipin and Jayshree are extremetly nice. They both lived in Toronto for a long time, and have since moved back to India. But because of their time in Canada they are very Westernized and understand the differences between Indian and Canadian life. They took us to a western style tex-mex type place for dinner. It was pretty yummy J I had a veggie cutlet type thing with pasta, mushrooms and veggies. I also tried sweet lime soda for the first time. Its basically lime juice and soda water, and you get like a sugar syrup on the side so you can decide how sweet to make it. It was really refreshing!
We had actually been planning on sampling some of the nightlife after dinner, but we were both really wiped out, so we just headed back to our hotel and crashed by about 11pm. What an awesome and busy day!
SUNDAY
Sunday morning we got up fairly early, because we wanted to go visit the ISKCON temple (about 10 km away from the city center) before doing some shopping and then catching our train at 4:20 pm. Let me just mention how much I enjoyed my hot, bucket-free shower!
We decided to forgo the breakfast that was included (because we didn’t know how long it would take to show up) and headed out to a nearby “Café Coffee Day”. We both had a mocha muffin and a solar eclipse coffee (basically a cappuccino with some chocolate streaks and a bit of spice) for breakfast. Having a real coffee really made my day! (When did I become such a coffee addict anyways?). Anyways, the coffee and muffin was a really nice change from our usual breakfast J
We arrived at the ISKCON (international society for Krishna Consciousness) temple around 10am. Although it was still pretty early, there were crowds of people coming in to see the famous temple. We dropped off our shoes and headed through security. Priyanka went through security first, and when she opened up her bag for them to check it, we were informed that we wouldn’t be allowed to bring our cameras inside and that we would have to check them. Neither of us were comfortable with the idea of leaving our cameras behind (even with a security guard you never know) so we pushed our way back through the one way traffic of people heading into the temple and headed out. We did end up finding a beautiful temple a little bit further down the road, topped with a large gold dome, where we were allowed to bring our cameras inside, so the trip out to ISKON was not entirely failed.
After visiting the temple we caught an auto back to the city center, and arrived just as the shops were opening at about 11:30 am. We visited a few fancy sari shops (Priyanka is looking for her wedding sari!) and looked at a lot of beautiful and elaborately beaded silks. We dined on stuffed parotas and pappadams at a cute, touristy Indian restaurant called Ullas, and then shopped for trinkets at the nearby government run Cauvery Arts and Crafts emporium. At this point it was almost 2pm, so we headed back to our hotel to grab our bags (we had already checked out but we’d stored our backpacks in the hotel as so not to have to carry them around all day) and then caught another auto to commercial street.
Commercial street was supposed to be about 2 km away from our hotel, which is definitely walkable, but we decided on the auto to save time (since we needed to leave for the train station at about 3:15). We knew it should be about 20 INR for the ride. The first auto driver we saw offered us 15 INR. This sounded pretty good to us, so we hopped in. Unfortunately it was too good to be true. He wanted to take us to some other shops where he is obviously on commission and wouldn’t leave us alone, so we made him pull over after about 100m, got out and didn’t pay him a thing. We managed to stop a more honest driver who took us commercial street for 20 INR without any stops.
Commercial street was pure madness. There are people everywhere and more shops than you can shake a stick at. It was fun though, meandering through all of the traditionally Indian stores. I didn’t actually buy anything there, but it was fun.
3:15 rolled around much sooner than we would have liked, and we hopped another rickshaw to the train station. Before we knew it we were on the train back to Chennai. I could swear that as soon as we stepped out of the train station in Chennai all of my mosquito bites started to itch again! Purely psychological I’m sure, but funny all the same. We arrived back to SPASTN at about 10:30 pm, tired but happy. Bangalore is a really lovely city, and it was a really relaxing, fun weekend. All the same, it was kind of comforting to come back to our humble little home here in Chennai, and crawl under our mosquito nets for a solid night’s sleep.
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