Tiger!!!!!!!!!!

We are back from Bangalore. Got up at four this morning and arrived back at Vepery at half eleven. Loooong trip on a train, but Isaac, Cathy, Amy and I amused ourselves by making a Chennai Challenge team top trumps, very funny, and much discussion was had concerning everyone’s Food Extravagance score and Pon Rating (long story- I rated fairly high in both categories).

So to Bangalore. We left at the ridiculous time of quarter to five in the morning, and froze for the whole train ride to a very cool Bangalore, arriving about nine. We were picked up by a couple of guys in a bus and taken to YMCA City. The rooms were…interesting. Half of them didn’t have windows to the outside world, no they looked straight into the badminton court, and so the peeps in those rooms were woken early in the mornings by lots of early rising shuttle players. Isaacs room didn’t have a working shower and the ceiling was covered, literally covered in green damp, it smelt foul and looked awful. My room had little patches of damp on the ceiling, bits of which crumbled onto the end of my bed, my shower wasn’t attached to running water and on the third night I managed to complete pull of my inside door handle and have to screw it back on with Isabel’s penknife. In all the rooms the sheets and pillows were damp so most of ended up sleeping on the blankets instead. In Sarah’s bathroom a genius bit of plumbing linked the shower drain to the drain leading outside so she flooded her bathroom completely (hopefully drowning Charlie the cockroach in the process). But apart from all of that they were ok rooms, at least we had somewhere to rest our weary heads.

Saturday afternoon we went off to find some lunch and then a bunch of us wandered around trying to find some interesting shops, only to walk past endless motor cycle places. In the end we decide dto get an auto and ask to go to a shopping entre, and it worked. We ended up at Bangalore central, a kind of Debenhams place, with a coffee shop! Café Coffee Day…bliss. I miss coffee shops so much. We then went to try ands find a shop that sold last years Reginikanth movie, Sivaji, only to be told that as it was such a big film it wouldn’t be out for another couple of……years!!!!! Nooo, I bought the soundtrack though as it’s quite groovy and has one of our dances on it.

Sunday we went on the Kanataka government tour to Mysore. Our guide was completely incomprehensible apart from the words left, palace, right, palace, hill, palace, hotel and palace. It was alright though I suppose, we did get to see ‘the most beautiful palace in the world’ and the musical fountain spectacle, along with a rather disappointing summer palace, several temples and a fort which no longer existed because it had been completely destroyed!
Monday we had yet another early start to go on a five hour!!!!!! Drive to Bandipur park for a one hour!!!! Safari. Included in the day was a very nice buffet lunch, the chance to stroke a Samba deer and the fun of 13 of us in a bus with 12 seats. Amy, Isaac, Cat and I perfected the four people on three seats thing with Amy lying across our laps, and James spent most of the journey on the floor.
The safari was well worth the drive though, We paid about 240 rupees (about 3 pounds) and got to see a kingfisher, lots of monkeys, samba deer, a giant squirrel, elephant, a jungle chicken and…..a tiger! It was amazing, it was only there for a few seconds, and no one managed to get a picky, but it was there for sure, in the wild, a real life wild Indian tiger, wow! It made our day.
Yesterday we had a very lazy morning, finally a chance to sleep in!!!! Then in the afternoon we split up into groups and went exploring. Liv, Cat, Lydia and I went to have a girly afternoon and had fun navigating our way around the city without a map, any idea of where we wanted to go or what it was called, and without being able to speak the language. But amazingly we mad e it to a shopping centre and enjoyed wandering round, drinking yet more café coffee day (3rd day in a row, this is why my food extravagance rating is so high) and then treated ourselves to a head massage at the spa. Some would say that it was a very western waste of our time in India but we see it more as embracing the other side of Indian culture, the very rich side, who like to buy cute dresses, drink expensive coffee, and get treatments at Spas.

The journey back wasn’t so great, our Auto drivers mate was a little over friendly, but we made it back in one piece and then legged it to meet the others at the restaurant, ruining our new beautifully soft and shiny hair in the torrential rain!

And now we are back in Chennai, the lovely Chennai. And have just over 13 hours left before we disappear yet again! Two buses, one long journey on hair pin bends up steep hill, with 150 very excited young boys! Wish us luck 

xx