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After months of planning the day had come, we awoke early and delivered the girls to my mum’s where they will stay for a while before going to the kennel for a few weeks, when I got home Ruth had prepared a cooked breakfast for me, we then made the house ready for our absence and headed down to the bus stop.



We tend to catch the bus to the airport and get a cab back but the bus is annoyingly slow today and even though the connecting bus was waiting when we arrived. Check in at the airport was hassle free although they did an explosives test on me, the first stage of the flight to India would have been without incident except hostesses kept bringing me raw vegetable meals which were healthy but boring.



On arriving in Singapore we collected our bags and took the free bus to the budget airport which wasn’t far away, unfortunately there was nothing there to do and the early check in was closed so we put our luggage in storage and returned to the main terminal to have something to eat and visit a few shops. When we returned the budget airport was chaotic so it took some time to get checked in. When we entered the departures area some young Indian lads showed me some photos of them and Shane Warne they were beaming with pride. When we boarded our flight the staff were getting angry because the Indian passengers were bringing huge amounts of luggage onto the aircraft which couldn’t be secured in the overhead lockers so they started to chuck it off.



The plane was significantly delayed and as usual the only person on the plane who put their seat back is the one directly in front of me so I endured a horror flight with my legs wrapped around my neck. Eventually we arrived in Bangalore to further chaos, it took an eternity to get through customs, fortunately we organised a driver to pick us up and deliver us to our MG Road hotel which was quite a quick trip at 2am.



Bangalore means boiled beans not very romantic that, but then it is not going to win any beauty awards (not bad for a big Indian city though). On waking, we had our first Indian breakfast, all very interesting and exotic before booking a driver to do some errands around the city and to see the main sights. First I had to organise a sim card which took bloody ages as I had to have copies of my passport and I needed passport photos, so these took a while to procure, however while I was doing this our driver took my shorts to a tailor friend to stitch up my zip which was coming off. Then I went and got a haircut, after shaving my head the barber started massaging it then moved down to my back it was pleasant and great value for $2.



We then visited a couple of interesting temples the highlight being the one dedicated to Nandi the bull god, then the Lalbagh Gardens where they were holding the annual flower show. The traffic here is like nothing I have ever seen, the noise and the million almost accidents is insane, you just have got to turn off and hope for the best. After about five hours in the traffic we grabbed a quick meal and returned to our very comfortable hotel.

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