After arriving at Bangalore airport at 04:10 we picked up our luggage and when leaving the luggage area we were immediately greeted by two people who asked me the same question: “Taxi sir?”
I didn’t trust them, so I went to the information kiosk to ask how we would get to our hotel. She kindly explained how we would get to the bus station.
When walking to the bus station a man walked next to us, stating his taxi was much cheaper than the bus.
This guy had even less credibility than the two previous men, so I thanked him and said goodbye.
(in the end he lied, since the bus was quite a bit cheaper than his cab)
Indian traffic is something special.
It reminded me of a game called Quake 3, where I once played a free for all with 30 people in a map fitted for 10.
Signalling where you going is completely optional and the main form of letting others know of your presence is by using the horn. Our busdriver was very fond of his horn, he even had a second horn for special occasions when there was a near collision.
After a bumpy ride we were dropped off at Ghandinagar, but we weren’t sure where our hotel was.
Within 10 seconds a new cab driver arrived asking us where we needed to go. Luckily I noticed the hotel’s name in my wifi hotspot list, so we knew it had to be close.
The driver pointed us in the right direction and we finally found our first hotel.
By now it was about 06:00 so we were pretty beat down. Our check-in was at 12:00, but we were happy to pay a little fee to get immediate access to our room, where we fell into our beds to get some rest.
We awoke at 14:00 and decided to head into the center of Bangalore.
I remember that Google Maps indicated it was a 25min walk, but my guess is that they don’t know Indian traffic.
After 1,5 hours of walking and crossing roads which seemed a lot like Frogger, we grabbed something to eat at a place which had Indian specialities, a spicy McChicken wrap and a spicy McPaneer wrap. (and they were actually quite spicy).
After our belated lunch we headed into a cafe called Rushh to try out some local beer, Kingfisher which wasn’t that bad.
When we finished out beers we headed back into the hot outside world (34°C) looking for new adventures.
Walking is also quite the exercise, you’re never sure if you’re allowed to walk where you currently are, and when there are sidewalks they mainly look like ruins.
After walking for several more hours we took a rickshaw back to our hotel, again experiencing the Indian traffic but this time without even less safety measures.
In a dark alley we found a restaurant where a lot of people were eating.
Although they used red plastic lawn chairs as seating it looked nice enough so we choose a table and sat down.
The waiter helped us order our food, since we didn’t actually know what was on the menu, and we ended up with the following:
It was called Dal Fry with Roti and it was delicious! We also ordered some cokes and a few refills of Roti, and in the end we were down €3, money well spent.
The waiter was really kind and helpful and made sure that we had enough on our plates and that we ate our dinner properly with our hands (not sure why we got cutlery though).
Afterwards we checked out a few more stores and headed back to our hotel to get some rest.
Tomorrow we’ll be exploring more of Bangalore, hopefully with a bit more energy!
PS. I’m not really able to insert a lot of photos in the posts. They advertise a lot with free WiFi around the city but it never actually works, so we’re stuck with the hotel wifi which is really, REALLY slow.