Bangalore


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February 21st 2010
Published: February 21st 2010
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On a Friday night in Bangalore, I noticed two things that stuck in my mind. First, I saw groups of local women wearing jeans. Then later at night, a rat ran across my foot while I was sitting on my bed in the hotel room. The funny thing is I've been traveling in small town India long enough now to be more surprised by the women in jeans than by the rat in the hotel room. But Bangalore was very different than anywhere else I have been so far in India. Here India has embraced a more Western lifestyle, for better and for worse, making for striking contrasts between India's past and future.

I left Madurai feeling refreshed and happy to be traveling again after a frustrating couple days in Kodaikanal. The station supervisor somehow managed to squeeze me on the overnight train to Bangalore, and for the modest price of $5 US I had a bunk to sleep in for the 11 hour ride. Arriving in Bangalore I was struck by how Westernized the city seemed compared to where I had been. I saw a McDonald's - the first US franchise I've seen since coming here, then I saw
Munnar - OLDMunnar - OLDMunnar - OLD

Old pic from Munnar
another, and then a KFC. Virtually all men wore Western style dress, and fixed prices rather than bartering seemed to be the norm in most shops. Around the city there were billboards for new apartments in satellite cities that looked remarkably similar to the high rises seen in places like China and Korea. It was also my first contact with serious air pollution I've had since coming to India - something I expect to be much worse in cities like Delhi and Mumbai.

Yet still it was hard to forget what country I was in. My first morning out walking around town, I felt the distinctive squish as I stepped into a cowpie in the city's main outdoor market. A rickshaw driver took me to his friend's shop en route back to the hotel, and crossing the street was as much a game of chicken as it has been everywhere else I've been here. Locally run chai stalls still outnumber the chains ten to one, and the intensity of smells, colors, and sounds is was as intense here as everywhere else I've been.

I spent my two days in Bangalore mostly just walking around the city, through outdoor markets, past people hawking bananas, pineapples, coconuts and oranges, alongside smog choked boulevards with all the honking and chaos you'd expect from a major Indian city, and through lush gardens and parkland where trees and flowers are starting to bloom in full force. Although it never gets cold in this part of India, late February and March are apparently the months when most plants bloom, and the sunlight gets even more intense as the sun moves back into the Northern hemisphere.

I didn't take an abundance of pictures in Bangalore, so the photos on this blog are a mix of my past couple weeks.
Stay tuned...


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21st February 2010

Pics
There ARE more pics to go with this blog. However, I have now been at the internet cafe for 3 hours - the last 2 of which I have been waiting unsuccessfully for the pics to upload. I'll try adding more soon.

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