Commercial Street

Commecial Street in Bangalore.

Packed with tons of shops that sell everything you could possibly want.  The street is very narrow but cars/rickshaws still make their way up and down, continuously honking for people/cows or other obstacles to move.

Off of the main street there are even smaller alleyways.  Each alleyway seems to cater to a specific product.  If your looking for new shoes there's a complete alleyway setup for it.

If you look closely you'll see a cow amongst the cars.  Cows are very common to see all over the city.

One of the amazing crafts in India is carvings done out of marble (Youtube video on how they do it).  It's hard to tell from the pictures but inside the outer carving is an inner carving as well.  In the larger elephant carvings you can get an elephant within an elephant within an elephant, amazing.

 

 

Cows at the market lead a pretty good life being able to clean up the extra vegetable/flower remains.

The fruits and vegetables in India are very good.  They have much smaller bananas then the kind we get in North America, but they're much more flavourful here.

When people see you with a camera, they all ask to have their picture taken, a little strange but they're always very friendly.

Hindu Temple in the midst of all the other shops on Commercial Street.

In between bars (Hard Rock/Biere Club) we decided to stop into a Fish Spa.  The idea is that hundreds of these little fish with suction cup mouths remove dead skin and exfoliate your feet.  It's the weirdest feeling and extremely ticklish at the beginning.

Kyle & Nathan trying not to pull their feet back out.

 Cool view from the side of the aquarium

Nandi Hills ... quite the view

Saturday we decided to hit one of the local landmarks Nandi Hills.  The trip up the hill was an interesting journey, the road goes side to side through hairpin turns to make it up the hill.  Every major curve was numbered, I think it makes it easier for them to find you if you go off the road.  I couldn't believe that there were even a few rickshaws that made the trek up, I think there might have been some Flintstone peddling to get them up the steep hills.

View of the road from top of Nandi Hills

  Once up the hill the views were spectacular.

Monkey mania

The monkey's throughout the park area were hilarious   Like watching the kids play back and forth.  I've heard that in general monkeys can be quite vicious but these all seemed very used to people.

 
One of the Hindu temples on the top of Nandi Hills

Kyle (one my expat Sandvine coworkers) and I standing in front of Nellikai Baavanna (Bull) temple.  In behind is a 10 foot stone carved Bull that has been there for over 900 years.

Two valuable things to remember when visiting a Hindu temple ... take off your shoes and don't use your left hand for anything, but take as many pictures as you want.

As we were leaving I heard some rustling in the trees above, this little guy was only 3 feet away from me, directly over my head.

Dasara

The Indian celebration of Dasara is underway this week.  It's customary for the vehicles and buildings to get decorated with flowers.  Umesh is the one that takes me back and forth to work (I have a hard time calling him my driver).  He's the one risking life and limb (along with me in the car) to navigate Bangalore traffic, he can honk with the best of them.

Umesh on Dasara

I hardly think the bus drivers need any further distractions from blocking their vision.  Buses by far are the most aggressive things on the roads.

We take the back way into work which is basically through a major construction zone.  Even the tractors get decorated.

View from my balcony

Palm Meadows is a very nice place, this is the view from the balcony.  Yes it won't be too hard consuming some Kingfisher soaking in the 29 degree sun.

Access to Sandvine Bangalore

Access to Sandvine isn't quite the view as from the balcony, the building is still very much a work in progress.  Amazing to see that they let people walk into a major construction site like this.

Work in progress

Glad that I'm working on the first floor only, the second and above look slightly drafty.

 Office past the construction is very nice.

Finally here

Luckily the trip over to Bangalore was largely uneventful.  The usual delays in departures, but luckily enough overlap between flights to avoid missing any of them.  One weird thing British Airways does is sprays an insecticide throughout the cabin leaving London.  Not sure what they're worried about taking from London into Bangalore but seemed strange.

Out for a walk this morning I bumped into a Pug dog out for a walk at the complex.  There have been a ton of dogs around that are strays, funny the first 'pet' dog I see is a Pug.  I have a hunch that I'm going to be paying for a first class ticket for Tilly to soak in the Indian sites.

Today is Gandhi's birthday, not a national holiday but it does mean that it's dry and you can't purchase any alcohol.  It also meant that when my driver dropped me off and I mentioned I wouldn't need him for the rest of the day, I had no way of checking out the sites other than rickshaw.  

Traffic is crazy, there are no blindspots in India, you simply follow the horns that are honking behind you to guide you ... Jedi like driving reflexes.

I've learned a few valuable lessons today:

• everything is negotiable, everyone wants as much money as possible for the service they're providing
• force rickshaw drivers to use the meter + tip versus some magical amount they come to for getting you to a place
• when a street vendor wants to sell you something don't make eye contact or speak to them
• it may sound rude, but acknowledging and politely saying No, you will be followed for several blocks with a never ending sales pitch.