India, week 1



I was lucky enough to spend the month of February in Bangalore, India (on the company's dime).

I was staying in what they call a "serviced apartment". It's like an extended stay hotel in the US, but the apartments look more like real apartments. On a local colleague's (Vijay) advice I chose a place called Homestead. It turned out to be conveniently located (as far as nightlife and shopping is concerned), very quiet and peaceful, and rather professionally run. Talking to people who made different choices, it was as close to a jackpot as one can get.

The building was located on a private side-road, which is crucial in a city where cars are driven using the horn as much as the steering wheel. It was also a rich neighborhood, so the roads were quite decent and I could walk around till late night in the area without immediate danger to my belongings.

The picture shows the street right in front of the aparment.

Every morning a cab would come and take me to work. Due to horrendous traffic, the 7 mile ride took anywhere between 30 minutes and an hour. This gave me plenty of opportunity to stare out the window and observe the daily life of the city.

As the picture tries to show, Bangalore architecture is about extremes. Beautiful brand new office buildings punctuate streets of run-down sheds. True to local custom, the owners of the shiny buildings don't particularly care about their neighboorhoods, or even their own portals. As an extreme example, I'd seen estates where the inside of the fence surrounding the property was nice and shiny, while the outside was rotting away.

The only constant is road quality. It's completely deplorable, even by Hungarian standards. According to locals, corruption and huge kickbacks are as much to blame as simple lack of funding. There is also a lack of roads, new enormous apartment complexes and office buildings are going up all over the city like mushrooms, with no road construction to help people get to or from.

Here is another example of the same principle. A reasonably nice building is surrounded by cows, trash and vehicles that have seen better days.

The wondering cows are usually offerings to a temple. They grow up around the temple and eat whatever is available (food offerings, trash, leftovers). Most of them are rather incapable of adapting to city life, posing a continuous traffic hazard as they meander around aimlessly.

The diversity in buldings is also present in the diversity of shopping facilities. There are quite a few upscale shopping malls, not unlike their European counterparts. I've collected a few pictures of less shiny retail locations (sorry, I just found them more entertaining)...

One picture I'm sorely missing is that of a storefront bearing the name "Anu's Refactories" (with the apostrophe hardly visible). If someone can tell me what it is, please don't hesitate...

Truck drivers consider it their sworn duty to appropriately hand-decorate their vehicle. I've even seen carved wooden doors. This picture and the next show some typical embellishments.

In addition to proper roadside shops, fruit stands (typically rolling carts) are also quite common. Fruit is abundant and extremely cheap. A glass of freshly squeezed fruit juice (or milkshake) typically costs the equivalent of about 25-50 cents (typical choices: tangerine, sweet lime, mango, pineapple, grape, watermelon, sugarcane).

I was shocked to discover that navel oranges are not widely available (except for expensive speciality shops). Indians think that tangerine is orange. Even the Tropicana "orange" juice that you buy in India contains tangerine juice.

Here is another prime example of the roadside mom-and-pop shops.

This was an unusual truck, as the "Please sound horn" marking is not in English.

Most professional drivers choose to forgo the luxury of an external rearview mirror, because due to the crowded nature of Indian roads, they are an item in need of frequent replacement. Instead, they rely on the kindness of strangers to indicate their position by honking when they approach.

When it comes to transportation, there are many choices. The cheapest are public buses, then come three-wheeler auto rickshaws (fondly referred to as "autos") and then car-based cabs.

The 3 seat autos (depicted 3rd from the left) come with a 2 stroke engine (that purrs reminescent of Trabants). Most of them are converted for LPG use -- the fancy conversion has a built-in gas container, but many owners save money by simply chaining a 9 kg LPG cylinder to the seat instead.

Bangalore law states that the auto driver can't make his passengers carpool, therefore 3 seat models are abundant. Delhi drivers are allowed to take on additional customers headed in the same direction, so they prefer 6 seaters. (As you will see in week 3 pictures, the number of seats is not really a prime consideration when determining the number of passengers.)

The most popular choice of cab is the amazingly powerful and spaceous 53 horsepower subcompact, the Tata Indica.

Those who prefer to drive on their own, often get a motorcycle instead of a car. Seeing the extensive traffic jams and the (lack of) parking opportunities, it's a sound decision.

That being said, I can't really approve of the choice -- made by many -- of having two adults and a child (often infant) inbetween on a small motorcycle. I have even witnessed 3 adults and a child on a single bike.

As you can see, the public bus is not a particularly enticing alternative...

Over the weekend, I went to see the Bangalore sights. First in line was the Bannerghatta National Park, a small wildlife reservation right on the outskirts of Bangalore. The park has a large collection of tigers, and a smaller -- but respectible -- collection of large feline species and various other wild animals.

Some of the animals are in cages, but most of them are roaming around in large, open forests. You need to take a safari to see them (which just means that they will put you on a caged-in bus and drive you around for an hour). The bus got amazingly close to some of the wildlife, as the pictures show...

This black bear was sleeping just off the roadside.

A tiger, busily behaving as any cat would...

...yet another tiger picture...

Sorry for the many tiger pictures, I couldn't resist...

The park offers elefant joyrides. For a couple of bucks you can sit in the little cage on the back of the elephant and ride around for a few minutes. Unfortunately you get on the elephant using an elevated plaform with a ladder, and not the traditional way (climbing up from the bent front leg of the animal).

The Bull temple is named after the enourmous stone bull inside. The statue is carved from a single piece of stone.

A good example of temple decorations.

I only had half an hour to gallop through the Lalbagh botanical garden, so I didn't manage to take any nice flower pictures :) Here is a nice city view from a hill in the park...

On Sunday, I went and tried out the famous $30 brunch at the Leela Hotel. Due to some bar hopping activity the previous night, I passed on the all-you-can-drink champagne. I did my best to cover the food selection, but it would have taken at least 4 hours to actually try everything... The items I did manage to try were pretty darned good, and I enjoyed the live pop music as well (few things are as memorable as an Indian girl singing Dido).

The hotel's garden is teeming with flowers, some more exotic than others (actually, the ones I consider exotic are probably the ones that are commonplace to the locals and vice versa :)).

...one more flower...

One last flower picture from Leela's garden...

Next I visited the enormous banyan tree just outside the city. The tree seems to serve two main purposes. On one hand it provides locals a place to hang out, relax and to play with the kids. On the other hand, it gives the same opportunity for a large group of monkeys.

The two species get along quite well, the only major disturbance is that one of them tends to drop leftover coconuts from the branches, which poses a health risk to the other.