The busy streets of Bangalore

After a week in Hampi, it was almost refreshing to return to India. Hampi was more of an escape from India, hanging out with fellow travelers and lazily passing the hours away. So, arriving in the wee hours of the morning to the hustle and bustle of Bangalore actually excited me. The chaotic pace of the cities, that initially made me question traveling here on our first days in Mumbai, was a welcome change of pace. (I still recognize that I am not a city person and can only handle the fast pace living so long...) So, we spent (a mere) two days exploring the city. It was a highly rewarding time, as Bangalore has several huge parks and green spaces that you can retreat to when your heart is racing from dodging the traffic or when you need escape the exhaust from the streets.

We spent a morning exploring the city market which is a cramped concrete building full of tiny stalls with beautifully stacked fruits and vegetables, piles of flowers being strung up for offerings at the temples or for wedding ceremonies, brilliant cones of dyed powder (used for the bindi, or dot, women place on their foreheads). It was a delightful smorgasboard of colors and sounds as people darted up and down the narrow, littered aisles through the stalls.

We also visited a wonderful Botanic Gardens, where I reverted to a biology nerd and got lost in all the wonderful trees, that were mostly new to me.

And a trip to Bangalore would not be complete without a trip to NASA, which we were told was the first pub in Bangalore (opening about 20 years ago). It was retrofitted to be a giant spaceship, and the waiters were even in flight suits. The tables were all small spaceships, and supposedly they put on a mean laser show that we somehow missed. It screamed of the 80s, and it was hard to believe that we were actually in India while sipping on our beer.