City Break..

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So...Bangalore...the silicon valley of India. What a cool town. Stuffed full of ultra cool bars and quality restaurants, with tree lined avenues and parks and pavements that people use, and if we are not mistaken, a few decibles less on the horn usage. It feels like we've been on an Easyjet weekend rather than visting an India city. Steve would surely like to come back for work and live it up on expenses.

Intially though, we had real problems finding a hotel ..everywhere we called was full, even the seriously cheap....we found out that some spritual guru was in town for the weekend and 2.5 million! people had converged on Bangalore to see him. We ended up finding a great room though, a suite in fact, with great views of the city, smack bang in the entertainment area (MG road)...but we obviously had to pay for the privledge.

Bangalore is a very modern city. Loads of low cut tops and jeans, and coffee bars and the afore mentioned restaurants and posh bars and clubs, including one of the coolest bars we've ever been into..we were taken by our new friends (see below), who couldn't intially get in as they were all blokes (hang on - is this Bournmouth!!)

There isn't a great deal of sightseeing to do, but we managed to see a 8 meter high 'Bull Temple', the Aquarium (5p entrance!) and had a walk round the city park. We also went to the Royal Bangalore races...managed to win, twice! Not bad as the second was a 6-1 second favourite and we had 500 Rupees on the nose. That certainly pays for a few Kingfishers.

The food was superb. It turns out the local type of curry (Andhra) is one of the spiciest in India (according to the blurb), and so off we went to the 'best' in town (RR on Church Road). Steve went for the Chille Chicken !! and it turns out they were correct on the spicy front! A sauce of virtually neat bright green mashed chillies...superb.

Later we stubbled across a bar for an after dinner drink. It was packed full of young Indian men (no women, but it wasn't a gay bar)...the guys were all dancing and singing round their tables to the indian music..it was a great atmosphere. Steve and I stood at the bar and watched them all for a while and then one of the groups asked us (Steve) to join them for drinks and a dance. It was the funniest night...these guys thought the sun shone from Steve's backside! They were all over him, asking him questions, plying him with beer..they were only being friendly, but Indian friendly is very different to English friendly! He was certainly the star attraction of the evening.

Anyway, we left Banaglore on a 15 hour overnight train to Goa (great fun), where we are staying for the remainder of our trip, even though it's full of fat 'Essex boys and girls' (but we can't be arsed to move on)

See ya all soon

Steve and Lou xxx

xx

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Photos

" Mr Steve " and his worshipers
....Steve was the star attraction of the evening

Bull temple
...a 6 meter high granite bull