Bangalore

Since Sri Lanka is so close to southern India, we decided that our next stop would be in Bangalore to visit some friends and work collegues that I haven't seen in a while. For once it was really easy arriving in a new country thanks to our local connections. Suresh, a work collegue at PMC, was very helpful and arranged for a car to pick us up from the airport and drive us into town. Leaving the airport, all we had to do was find our driver holding up a placard with our names and away we went to battle the infamous Bangalore traffic. Although the airport is only about 30km from the city, the traffic makes the driving times way longer than you would expect - even though it was around 10pm at night, it still took us around two hours to get into town. We even got a flat tire on the way!

We stayed near the PMC office in Banglaore with the family of a work collegue of mine. Jomy and his family were amazing to put us up for the week that we were in Bangalore and we had a blast spending time with them. While we were staying there they introduced us to a wide variety of south indian cooking, and we soon realized that Jomy and his wife Shanthi are quite the foodies (and also quite good cooks). They made us a wide array of dishes including dosas, idly, sambar, fresh chapati, coconut sambal (grated fresh from the shell!), dhokla, and some delicious curries made with a wide variety of spices. There were so many dishes that I am afraid to say that I can't even remember the names of many of them. They would keep putting dish after dish of amazing food in front of me, and I just kept eating! At the office, the Bangalore team also surprised me with a birthday cake! Tom and Jerry - my favorite.

Out for dinner with Jomy and Shanthi

The timing of our visit also happened to coincide with the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Bangalore. This Hindu festival is several days long and revolves around the Hindu deity Ganesha (the elephant-headed god of wisdom and the remover of obstacles). Giant clay sculptures of Ganesha are found everywhere in the city during this time - some small in local houses; others several meters high installed in flashing, lighted shrines streetside. It seemed to me that almost everyone in the city was involved in some way. On our first day in town, Suresh invited Marie and I over to his house to celebrate the festival and we had a fantastic traditional meal from his home state of Andhra Pradesh. It was an amazing afternoon of gorging on a wide assortment of dishes and treats, along with catching up on local news.

The next day, another friend of mine, Musala, invited us to his home where his entire local community block was having a large celebration with a whole host of cultural events. As soon as we arrived I knew that we were going to be in for one heck of a night - Hindi music was blasting, people were dancing, and everyone in Musala's building seemed to be involved in a heated battle with coloured powder as their weapon of choice. Within the span of thirty seconds of our arrival, Musala got turned into a rainbow. Lucky for us, we got off easy with a forehead smudge and only a little collateral damage from the battle. Talking with others later that night we learned not to wear any clothes of value to this type of event. The rest of the night continued with dancing to tribal hindi beats hammered out by two musicians carrying traditional drums, and a procession around the neighbourhood with Lord Ganesha himself. After about an hour of mayhem, dancing, and flying colour bombs, the procession ended and we took the large clay Ganesha statue to the local lake where it would be imersed in water and disolved.

Rainbow Musala

The night ended with a great community dinner hosted by Musala's neighbourhood. We were definitly honoured to be invited, and everyone was so friendly and made sure that we were included in all the festivities whether we liked it or not. Thank goodness for the one or two Hindi movies I have seen - I used a few of those pretty sweet moves on the dance floor when I got sucked into the mayhem.

That weekend yet another work collegue of mine, Venu, organized an amazing adventure trek into the nearby countryside. Suresh, Musala, Venu, Marie and I headed out around 6am in the morning and drove about two hours to the trailhead at the base of a local hill (Antharagange near Kolar). For the next hour or so we hiked through the forest, and eventually reached our goal of a large set of boulders that form a natural cave system several hundred meters long. With no map, no guide, but with a strong sense of adventure we headed into the caves where we squeezed through gaps, clambered over boulders, and climbed/slid down cracks deeper into the maze. We were having a great time, but we soon learned that having a strong sense of adventure with no map is a good way to get lost. Undetered, for the next hour we searched for a way out - going up, down, around, poking our head up through natural skylights, looking for an exit. After some skillful underground navigation by Suresh, we eventually found the exit. For the rest of the afternoon we walked through the countryside among some very small farming villages and eventually made our way back to our starting point. To round out the afternoon, we stopped at a Punjabi dhaba and had a great assortment of tasty dishes - I can't beleive the quality of the food that came out of a kitchen that wasn't much more than a tin roof with tarps for walls.

Marie and I both had a great time during our stay in Bangalore and we got a good taste of the famous Indian hospitality. Thanks to all our friends who organized activities for our stay in Bangalore, and especially to Jomy for putting up with us for a week in his home!