Bored in Bangalore - Aug 8, 2008 - Bangalore, Karnataka, India

We ended up riding reserve class from Mysore to Bangalore. Our guidebook told us that the trip would only take two hours, so we went with the cheapest option possible. We thought we could endure pretty much anything… for a two-hour period. Unreserved means hard, wooden bench seating without assigned seats, without air conditioning, and without bathrooms. The tickets were dirt-cheap. So cheap, in fact, that any addition manpower beyond the conductor would probably must result in a loss of money for the railroad. This explains why there was no one checking tickets throughout the entire journey. This also explains why there was no official announcement when the train pulled into track 2 instead of track 3, as originally scheduled. We finally clued in when we found ourselves facing an empty freight train on track 3, while the crowds were running and fighting over seat space on track 2. We confirmed with a passer-by and then had to run to the front of the train to find a compartment with seat space remaining.

We found a bench with only one other person on it. Perfect. With the two of us, that made three on the bench. We were facing another bench of three, which would make it unlikely that anybody else would come and squeeze in. Right? Wrong. People continued to pile in, and squeezed themselves into every available nook, cranny and bench space. Showing one strip of the wooden bench was like inviting someone to join you. More people filled our train, our compartment and our bench. Oh well. Only a two-hour train, right? Wrong.

The old man squished between us and the window informed us that the trip would take 5 hours. 5 hours? Really? But Bangalore was only about 100 kms away! Surely the train must average more than 20kms/hour? He was right. The journey took five hours. Five hours with no space, no bathrooms, no extra water, and no air conditioning. We were packed in like livestock. We had no food and were starving. The train seemed to stop every 5 minutes. Vendors would hop on and off selling magazines, trinkets and strange foods. Although we were starving, we were not about to take risks with any of the food, especially with no bathroom on board.

We pulled into Bangalore at 7:30pm, three hours later than we expected. Bangalore has a population of 5.7 million and was renamed Bengaluru in November 2006. Apparently, it is the IT capital of India and an international hub for software and electronic development. Bangalore has attracted Indian and ex-pat computer technicians, programmers and engineers, and their comparably high level of disposable income has in turn attracted high level shops, restaurants and pubs – apparently those computer programmers really know how to party!! As a result of all of this, Bangalore boasts of its reputation as a modern, western-friendly city, with a progressive outlook and lots to offer both visitors and workers.

We had not made a hotel reservation in Bangalore and the first three hotels we tried were full. Others were way out of our price range. We finally found a hotel near the end of MG Road - Hotel Ajantja Trinity Inn. It was basic and quite expensive for what it was. By this time we were starving, so we went across the street to an Italian place situated on the bottom floor of a mall, underneath the movie theatres. It was also expensive, but we really enjoyed the food and the break from the Indian spices and flavours.

The next morning, we sought out the locally celebrated Mahatma Gandhi (MG) Road. MG Road is the centre of the old British quarter and is now the western part of Bengaluru. We saw a newspaper article that morning that stated that Bangalore was one of the worst walking cities in India. We found this to be accurate. Sidewalks were rare, and when present, were used as often by vehicles as by pedestrians. Cars seemed to make very little effort to avoid jaywalkers. There were rarely pedestrian signals for crossing. And the smoke, exhaust and pollution was overwhelming. We found it took a lot of energy just to walk short distances, since we had to constantly be aware of threats coming from all sides.

The guidebooks suggest that MG road is the place to go to experience the active pub life, the interesting and diverse selection of restaurants and some of the best shopping in India. Unfortunately, the shops it boasts of are Levis and Nike stores. And the diverse selection of restaurants includes Ruby Tuesdays and TGI Fridays. We ate at a Subway, which I guess was exotic since instead of beef and pork, they serve lamb salami, mutton bacon and chicken ham. And when we tried to experience a night out at the pubs, we had trouble finding one, then finally discovered that everything closes down at 11pm. This kind of sums up our time in Bangalore – it did not meet expectations. We came expecting something of a boomtown. We found a town that seemed ready to boom 5 years ago but never really did.

The guidebooks list only a few sights in Bangalore: a park; a strange Indian building built in the 50s that is inaccessible, and another temple with a big Nandi bull. Since we had just seen two of the biggest Nandi’s in the world and had no interest in parks or inaccessible buildings, we quickly realized that there wasn’t much for us to do or to see in this town. We spent the next couple of days walking around the MG road area, trying to find wifi connections and replenishing our supply of paperback books. Disappointed with its recommendations, we bought a second guidebook to supplement our original one. And we booked our train tickets out.

We spent one more night in the hotel, one more day wandering around MG road, and then we boarded a night train for Hyderabad. We are posting the only picture we took of Bangalore and it kind of sums up our time there and our impressions of the city from a tourist point of view. Meh…