Welcome to Bangalore

Our travel day to Bangalore started early. VERY early. We spent the previous day touring Varanasi and seeing some great sites. Somehow, Gage and I even ended up in a photo in one of the local newspapers – autographs available upon request. The tour was supposed to end with a visit to a candle ceremony along the river before a torrential downpour washed out that plan. However, our guide offered to take us to a similar ceremony that started early the next morning. Considering we didn’t know when we might be back here again, we thought that was a good plan. As such, our day started around 4:00 AM.

Following the ceremony, we were promptly taken back to the hotel for a quick breakfast before heading back to the airport for our flight back to Delhi and then on to Bangalore.

My first impression of Bangalore was that it reminded me a LOT of Nairobi. That first impression was heavily based on the traffic we experienced on the way to the hotel. And the subsequent traffic experiences did nothing to change that impression. Seriously. The roads DO have lane markings but I’m not entirely sure why. The cars sort of acknowledge them but the motorcycles are constantly lane splitting through what little space the cars may leave between each other. It’s more than a little ridiculous – although, I think Nairobi was still worse. If it was North America, the entire scene would be a continuous road rage incident waiting to happen (except for the “waiting to happen” part). And I’ve never heard such a liberal use of horns as cars and motorcycles weave their way through the most minimal of openings. The crazy thing is, it all kind of actually works. Sort of. I mean, well … ok, I retract that statement. It’s chaos.

Fortunately, among the chaos was a seemingly endless supply of taxis, ubers, and autos (short for auto-rickshaw). Uber proved to be incredibly useful as it (mostly) eliminated the language challenges that could have otherwise hindered our efforts of getting from A to B or क से ख, as the case may be. And no, I don’t really know how accurate that Hindi translation is but I tried.

We actually wanted to try one of the autos but our lone attempt to arrange such transport was more than a little unsuccessful. The driver (or, more accurately, the pimp-like character through whom we were trying to arrange said auto rickshaw transportation) was clearly trying to take advantage of our tourist status by insisting they take us to a few shops en route back to the hotel (and charging more than Uber in the process). After insisting we weren’t interested in said shops we finally just walked away and booked an Uber.

Once again, there are more than a few photos in the photo gallery. None of which are actually of Bangalore – those will come later. This gallery contains all things Varanasi. Well, maybe not ALL things … but some things.