Song of the day: Dedicated Follower of Fashion by The Kinks
We breakfasted on dhosas and idli at Sai Samrat for the final time, before taxiing it to the airport. This time the flight was relaxed, comfortable, and at no point during the journey did we feel like we were going to die, which was nice. We arrived in Bengaluru at about half past two. The temperature here was up from Mumbai – about 38 degrees – but somehow felt less oppressive.

You might know Bengaluru as Bangalore – like many cities in India it’s name was altered in the early noughties to a more phonetically correct spelling. It’s one of many cities in India which has changed it’s name back from the one that was bestowed on it by the British, who were unable to wrap their tongues around the native pronunciation.  Apparently the name of the city means “Town of Boiled Beans”.
We were driven down a smooth highway by a metered taxi – the lack of room for negotiation made us feel uncomfortable after a fortnight of haggling for every journey. Owing to a bizarre one way system the taxi dropped us a few hundred meters from our hotel and we walked the rest of the way. The Sheetal Residency cost six quid a night and provided a level of luxury that could not hitherto have dreamed of. It contained aircon, clean sheets, a functioning shower and a widescreen TV. After the scurrying of rats, soiled sheets and non-flushing bog of Central Residency in Mumbai, the sight of this luxury gaf was almost tear-inducing. By the time we’d both made use of the plush facilities it had dropped dark and there was no sightseeing to be done. There was nothing else for it but to head for a Kingfisher, followed by a curry in a vegetarian restaurant. After our experience in Balti Towers in Mumbai, we thought that the level of staring, pointing and excessive servitude had reached it’s peak. Again, the waiters at this particular joint managed to crank it up a notch. The food was superb, but whilst we feasted upon Jaipuri, pakoras and parathas, no less than five waiters feasted upon us with their eyes whilst leaning against a wall no more than four feet away from our table. Each time we went to spoon more curry onto our plates, a swarm of waiters would flutter around the table like moths to a flame, elaborately lavishing curry and rice onto our plates. So intense was the level of attention we recieved that I decided to snap a couple of selfies with these gentlemen in the background.

We paid the bill and returned to the privacy of our posh hotel room to watch the evening’s helping of 20/20 action.
The next day we woke late and got going even later. Noon was fast approaching and the sun was high in the sky by the time we began our journey through the dusty streets of Bengaluru to a market called Krishnarajendra. On the way we passed an ox with multi-coloured rainbow horns, and a row of shops, each containing sack upon sack of dried chillis. We smelt the market before we saw it. An aroma – no – an assault of coriander perforated our nostrils. Had somebody come and shoved a sprig up each nostril I don’t think it could have been more pungent. Amongst general scenes of vehicular and bovine pandemomium, Huge carpets of the green herb were being watched over by market traders sat on their haunches. We gravitated through an infinity of vegetables toward a large multi-storey building which looked as if it had been abandoned long ago in a zombie apocalypse. Here we climbed the dingy stairs and walked through an area of hardware shops before coming to a balcony which rewarded us with a view over the flower market a few stories below. As with Mulikghat in Kolkata, the rainbow of colour that greeted us was sensational – I know of nothing like this in the UK, both for scale and variety of flowers. After a few minutes of looking down from our vantage point, we descended into the market itself and allowed ourselves to be dragged around as fascinated flotsam, bobbing along in the river of people that rushed around the various stores. Eventually we made our way out of the building and picked our way through the outskirts of the market.

After finding our bearings, we walked to Bengaluru fort. What remains of the fort is impressive, but apparently it represents the tip of the iceberg compared to the defences that stood here in the past. Once inside the walls the din of the traffic on the street was barely audible owing to the thickness of the towers surrounding us, and it was nice to spend a few minutes relaxing and looking around the Middle-Eastern architecture which contrasted with most of the buildings we’d seen so far.
Following this we got a bit lost and ended up starving hungry in the grounds of a hospital. It seems that this place was oversubscribed with patients and long queues of bored looking people snaked out from the doorways of the grand looking old buildings. We took the decision to go to the hospital canteen for lunch and took and consumed daal, chapatis and chai with an elderly couple who seemed puzzled as to why we were sitting in the public dining room with them, rather than in the room marked “Doctors Only” beyond the canteen.

We walked past the Tipu Sultan’s Palace, which was architecturally impressive but closed to visitors on the day that we visited, before taking a long trek in the heat to the Lalbagh Botanical Gardens. Although there was evidence of British influence, it was a geezer called Hyder Ali and his son, the aforementioned Tipu Sultan, who commissioned and built them in the 18th century. Ali and Tipu were leaders of the Kingdom of Mysore which ruled the roost around these parts before the Brits got involved. We spent an hour or so wandering around the vast expanses of the park, checking out all kinds of gigantic trees, ornamental greenhouses and cute, striped squirrels that looked a bit like chipmunks and seem to be as common in India as grey squirrels are in Britain. I was greeted by a young Indian gentleman of exquisite taste who pointed at me and said “Nice t-shirt bro!” before we we became embroiled in a multiple selfie-taking session with another group of lads. For the record I was wearing a tatty green shirt which I’ve owned since I was sixteen which says “Northern Soul – Keep The Faith” on it. Perhaps it’s not the t-shirt, but the effortless chic of the wearer, which makes an outfit…
At this stage we were pretty hot and sweaty and wanted to make use of the shower in the room. We were due to catch a night train to Hoispet at 10:00 that night and couldn’t be sure of our next opportunity to get clean. We hailed a rickshaw and went back to the hotel before heading down to the station early to get some food. The process of ordering at the station canteen was extremely confusing and involved paying for your food and collecting a ticket with the names of your desired dishes on them, which you would then wave under the nose of one of the chefs behind the food counter. This meant elbowing people out of the way and enduring with British politeness the several queue-jumpers who got their orders in first. The train was an hour late, and in the meantime we lay in the station concourse with a few hundred other people. There always seem to be scores of people lounging around on the floor around Indian railways stations – some homeless, some with time to kill between trains. I kind of like that everybody sits on the floor – there’s a kind of democracy to it, with the destitute and the merely delayed sharing the same space as equals.

Eventually our train appeared on the arrivals board and we stood on the platform as it began it’s slow-motion approach into the station. The length of Indian trains mean that they take an aeon to stop, and by the time the train comes to a complete halt half of the passengers have already jumped on or off. We found our beds and ignored the attentions of the chaiwallers, preferring to go straight to sleep. It seems to be an inevitability here that your train is going to be delayed by a good hour or two. But then when you look at the distance these services cover, the volume of passengers they carry and the amount of stations they stop at, it’s a wonder that they’re not even more delayed. However, the two best night’s sleep I’ve ever had on sleeper trains were had in India, and I was out like a light from eleven until about five in the morning.

It’s a pity that we’ve had such limited time in some places, but Bengaluru was really a stepping stone on our road to Hampi rather than a destination we’d identified that we wanted to go to.  Like everywhere in India, there’s plenty to fascinate the curious traveller, and we leave knowing that we may only have scratched the surface of what there is to discover here.  Bengaluru is known as a very modern, up and coming city.  We didn’t see that much evidence of this but I think this was more down to our limited time here.  I must say, I regret that we weren’t able to visit the Kingfisher Brewery and sample this nectar straight from it’s source!

Tomorrow we arrive in Hoispet, where we will take a rickshaw to Hampi.

Have a loverly day, whatever your endeavour.

Tommy and Lukey