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Terrace View East
View 1 from the hotel's sun-terraceI’m here!
Day one in India. Where should I start?
The flights were pretty uneventful. The flight was delayed in Birmingham by an hour but arrived in Dubai on schedule (how do they do that?). I mostly slept through the four hour wait for the flight to Bangalore waking up only when they called my name over the tannoy, warning that the gate was closing! I was warned about Indian bureaucracy before I travelled, to expect to be checked several times getting into the country but I came in with no problem at all. No queues at immigration, my bag was waiting for me on the carousel, straight through customs and the first person I met was my escort to the hotel. This guy is the official meeter and greeter for the Zuri Whitefield where I’m staying in Bangalore, that is his job, meeting people at the airport and escorting them to the hotel, and he gave me a guided tour of the route. It was difficult concentrating on what he was telling me however, as the antics of the driver and other road users were hard to ignore. Indian driving is incredible. It looks chaotic but between the drivers coming
Terrace view West
View 2 from the hotel's sun-terrace towards you on the wrong side of the road, the pot-holes, the constant tooting, the mountainous speed-breakers (speed-bumps), suicidal bikers and the sheer volume of traffic, there is a crazy order and it seems to work.
The Zuri is splendid, 5* air-conditioned luxury. Everyone working here is so cheerful and polite, nothing seems too much trouble. The hotel has four restaurants, an outdoor pool, a pool bar and on the roof a sun-terrace with another bar. I might just stay here! So far I have eaten only at the traditional Indian buffet but it is all you can eat and lush.
I’ve had a bit of a lazy day today. Alex and me (he’s my friend who’s working out here, you’ll hear more of him later) stayed up chatting and discussing where we are going and what we are going to do; so after a lie-in (9am India/4:30am UK) we had breakfast (massala dosa! – lush) and then I snoozed while Alex talked to people on 3 continents on 2 mobile phones sorting out a little problem he’s experiencing at work. After a leisurely lunch (raw vegetable salad with lamb - lush) Alex went into the office and I ventured
Volvo Bus Depot
Volvo buses
The best in Bangalore - they are the only ones to have air conditioning out onto the streets of Bangalore. Unfortunately the Zuri is located in a rapidly expanding, industrial area of the city so there were no markets to peruse and few street vendors to haggle with and I ended up wandering for a couple of km up and down from the hotel being entertained by the traffic and the state of the pavements. I passed lots of people who stared impassively until I smiled at them when they broke into huge grins and said hello. I tried chatting to one or two but I’m going to have to train my ears to their way of speaking English as I found them very difficult to understand. However they are lovely people and I like them.
It’s not as hot here as I imagined it would be. At the moment it is overcast and muggy, with a top temperature around 32 Celsius and everything is a bit sticky. Bangalore is green with lots of trees and little lakes around the place so I suppose that keeps it humid.
Anyway more tomorrow, I’m going out into the city itself which is about 20km by bus, taxi or auto-rickshaw so I should have lots to talk
Manhole covers
I just liked the way these were installed - not a spirit level in site about.
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The Woodsies
non-member comment
greetings
Good to see you have arrived safely, nice dog, looks like you could get a job on the roads. We'll be looking again tomorrow