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The week in Bangalore is pretty relaxed. I moved from a reasonable but non-descript hotel on the West side to a homestay apartment in the centre, walking distance from the main city life. The apartment is very well appointed, it appears to be owned by a Captain in the Indian military who I’m guessing is away on service and uses an agent to rent out this posh gaff in his absence. There are three large bedrooms off the central marble-floored lounge which has some tasteful cubist art on the walls, a decent sofa, a coffee table and reliable WiFi. This is a world away from where I have been of late. I take one large double room, Aussie Brett takes another and a big Sikh guy who is working in Bangalore but lives in Delhi has semi-permanent residence in the third room. There is a resident Man Friday who the agent refers to as “the boy” even though he’s in his late 20's. It seems that our Boy-Man-Friday is quite akin to Cinderella, he has a rolled up bit of bedding on the floor of the pantry at the back of the kitchen that you probably wouldn’t keep a cat back in the UK. Maybe the Cinderella simile isn’t too good, it would make Brett and the big Sikh guy the ugly sisters and I’m definitely not going to be his Prince Charming. Anyway, Cinders-Boy-Friday prepares breakfast (bloody curried Dhal again), cleans, shops, polishes, carries luggage, launders and generally hangs around the apartment all day and night but speaks no English, and our Hindi isn’t exactly coming along in leaps and bounds. I’ve never had a butler / houseman before and it’s a little strange as he insists on jumping up to get the door when I stand up, he pours drinks and won’t think of letting me even take my tea mug to the kitchen. He is completely bemused on the second evening when, having finally been curried, chillied, spiced and samosa’d into submission I cook dinner myself. My excitement at finding some shops which sell pasta, cornflakes, fresh milk, and clean fruit is second only to Boy-Friday’s excitement at the sight of a strange Englishman preparing food in his kitchen, without the need for a single cardamom seed, curry leaf of tamarind rind. In my ecstatic shopping state I bought far too much, but hey I’m going to prepare the first veggie bolognaise sauce I’ve had in months. I haven’t turned vegetarian I just can’t find a butcher and anyway, it’s very difficult to get beef here as most Hindus don’t eat cows, they’re sacred! Boy-Friday approves of my concoction but refuses to join me at the table for dinner, instead staying on the floor in the kitchen. He tucks into my veggie spag but doesn’t go for the grated cheddar on top (personally I think it’s the making of it) and appears put out when I decline another curry for breakfast the following morning. I’ve got PG tips, milk, bread and honey – happy days!
Over the next few days of exploring Bangalore I find a huge pyramid-shaped meditation temple full of people espousing the virtues of keeping a clean, uncluttered mind to create a clean uncluttered environment. I consider the irony of the concept of a clean uncluttered India during the next couple of hours as I pootle the bike through Bangalore’s tiny backstreets. I get completely lost in the Islamic quarter where dirt and clutter take on an inconceivable new level. Crippled cows and old Imams jostle with steel fabricators while impossibly overloaded hand-carts engage in a pitch battle with the donkeys dragging steel girders and smoking tuk-tuks on streets cemented together with compacted cow dung. Yet again the senses are overcome with noxious amazements. But Bangalore is a city of contrast and Vijay’s walking tour of the Lalbagh botanical gardens was just the tonic I needed. His knowledge of the flora and forna of India is remarkable, but his knowledge of Indian history is truly astounding. He talks with great passion and authority about historical cause and effect over the last couple of centuries in India. One of my favourite stories was the British colonialists building the Indian post-office network; no village in India is more the 3km from a post-office, that’s an impressive piece of logistics considering the size of this country. The British empire builders were concerned about the amount of man-hours lost to Malaria so they used the post offices to distribute free tonic water to the entire population to eradicate Malaria (quinine kills Malaria parasites), but of course, the British being British, they couldn’t take their tonic water on its own so they invented Bombay Gin with juniper berries as a mixer! One of the best tonics for me was meeting an erudite and educated bunch of locals on Vijay’s walking tour who were equally confused and disturbed by the level of rubbish and dirt in most parts of the country, but they admitted that their view was in the minority and the culture of drop it wherever you feel like is going to be difficult to dilute amongst a population of 1.3 billion people who have grown up defenestrating their defecation! I spent a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon looking around the brain museum in the Human Brain Tissue Repository at the Indian National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences and was kindly shown around the various brains by one of the university professors. He showed me some brains which had suffered severe head trauma from cricket balls and motorbike crashes … must remember to keep the head inside the helmet at all times, and avoid contact with the road and other vehicles and stray balls!
A couple of days before Brett, Lawrence and David arrived from Hampi I found Bangalore’s KTM service centre and asked them if they could help us do a small amount of servicing on our bikes. The mechanics were a bit confused at my request because our bikes are not available in India, the largest capacity KTM available here at the moment is 390cc. Brett and David have 690s and I’ve got an 1190 so I said just lend us some space and we’ll do the work. I don’t think they really understood what they were going to get and were completely bemused when four huge dirty touring bikes rolled in, argued our way to them giving us the use of a ramp and service corner at the back of their workshop and set about taking bits of our bikes apart. Brett took his whole fuelling system apart to find the misfire problem, David took his electrics apart to diagnose the issue with his non-flashing indicators (yes, we had already changed the relay twice), Lawrence changed the oil in his BMW and seeing as my big beast was running like a sewing machine I just helped the others a bit and polished my helmet!
The next day after some protracted discussions about routes we headed for some sight-seeing in the form of the Belum caves and the “Indian Grand Canyon” just South of Kurnool, which is a couple of hundred km South of Hyderabad. Brett, David and I found the caves which turned out to the hottest, sweatiest, stuffed-full-of-excited-school-kids-est caves I ever descended. We were hoping for some climatic respite from the 34°C sweatiness above ground but found ourselves dripping even more as the humidity underground reached Swedish sauna levels. On our return to the relative coolness of the surface David thought that a bit of wild-camping by the Indian Grand Canyon was a good plan so we followed Google maps’ idea of a road to the edge of the canyon. By road Google really meant a slightly beaten down goat track which follows an abstract path through the slightly less beaten down surrounding semi-desert. We found a “camp site” which appeared to be purpose built for us with a small raised concrete platform. The large wooden posts sticking skywards at each corner formed a perfect way to suspend my hammock, and the concrete platform made a great cooking area. Having purchased some provisions we made a very agreeable egg, veg, pasta dinner followed by more eggs in the morning. A somewhat annoyed Lawrence and Marcus arrived late at night having followed the GPS pin we sent them although I can see that negotiating the goat tracks in the dark would be quite an unpleasant experience for them. Sleeping under the stars at the edge of a canyon is hard to describe but the overriding memory more noisy than tranquil. Even in the middle of the countryside India is loud; the crickets, birds, dogs, monkeys and distant temples ensure that sleep is somewhat sporadic. Thank Vishnu for earplugs!
Over the next few days of exploring Bangalore I find a huge pyramid-shaped meditation temple full of people espousing the virtues of keeping a clean, uncluttered mind to create a clean uncluttered environment. I consider the irony of the concept of a clean uncluttered India during the next couple of hours as I pootle the bike through Bangalore’s tiny backstreets. I get completely lost in the Islamic quarter where dirt and clutter take on an inconceivable new level. Crippled cows and old Imams jostle with steel fabricators while impossibly overloaded hand-carts engage in a pitch battle with the donkeys dragging steel girders and smoking tuk-tuks on streets cemented together with compacted cow dung. Yet again the senses are overcome with noxious amazements. But Bangalore is a city of contrast and Vijay’s walking tour of the Lalbagh botanical gardens was just the tonic I needed. His knowledge of the flora and forna of India is remarkable, but his knowledge of Indian history is truly astounding. He talks with great passion and authority about historical cause and effect over the last couple of centuries in India. One of my favourite stories was the British colonialists building the Indian post-office network; no village in India is more the 3km from a post-office, that’s an impressive piece of logistics considering the size of this country. The British empire builders were concerned about the amount of man-hours lost to Malaria so they used the post offices to distribute free tonic water to the entire population to eradicate Malaria (quinine kills Malaria parasites), but of course, the British being British, they couldn’t take their tonic water on its own so they invented Bombay Gin with juniper berries as a mixer! One of the best tonics for me was meeting an erudite and educated bunch of locals on Vijay’s walking tour who were equally confused and disturbed by the level of rubbish and dirt in most parts of the country, but they admitted that their view was in the minority and the culture of drop it wherever you feel like is going to be difficult to dilute amongst a population of 1.3 billion people who have grown up defenestrating their defecation! I spent a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon looking around the brain museum in the Human Brain Tissue Repository at the Indian National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences and was kindly shown around the various brains by one of the university professors. He showed me some brains which had suffered severe head trauma from cricket balls and motorbike crashes … must remember to keep the head inside the helmet at all times, and avoid contact with the road and other vehicles and stray balls!
A couple of days before Brett, Lawrence and David arrived from Hampi I found Bangalore’s KTM service centre and asked them if they could help us do a small amount of servicing on our bikes. The mechanics were a bit confused at my request because our bikes are not available in India, the largest capacity KTM available here at the moment is 390cc. Brett and David have 690s and I’ve got an 1190 so I said just lend us some space and we’ll do the work. I don’t think they really understood what they were going to get and were completely bemused when four huge dirty touring bikes rolled in, argued our way to them giving us the use of a ramp and service corner at the back of their workshop and set about taking bits of our bikes apart. Brett took his whole fuelling system apart to find the misfire problem, David took his electrics apart to diagnose the issue with his non-flashing indicators (yes, we had already changed the relay twice), Lawrence changed the oil in his BMW and seeing as my big beast was running like a sewing machine I just helped the others a bit and polished my helmet!
The next day after some protracted discussions about routes we headed for some sight-seeing in the form of the Belum caves and the “Indian Grand Canyon” just South of Kurnool, which is a couple of hundred km South of Hyderabad. Brett, David and I found the caves which turned out to the hottest, sweatiest, stuffed-full-of-excited-school-kids-est caves I ever descended. We were hoping for some climatic respite from the 34°C sweatiness above ground but found ourselves dripping even more as the humidity underground reached Swedish sauna levels. On our return to the relative coolness of the surface David thought that a bit of wild-camping by the Indian Grand Canyon was a good plan so we followed Google maps’ idea of a road to the edge of the canyon. By road Google really meant a slightly beaten down goat track which follows an abstract path through the slightly less beaten down surrounding semi-desert. We found a “camp site” which appeared to be purpose built for us with a small raised concrete platform. The large wooden posts sticking skywards at each corner formed a perfect way to suspend my hammock, and the concrete platform made a great cooking area. Having purchased some provisions we made a very agreeable egg, veg, pasta dinner followed by more eggs in the morning. A somewhat annoyed Lawrence and Marcus arrived late at night having followed the GPS pin we sent them although I can see that negotiating the goat tracks in the dark would be quite an unpleasant experience for them. Sleeping under the stars at the edge of a canyon is hard to describe but the overriding memory more noisy than tranquil. Even in the middle of the countryside India is loud; the crickets, birds, dogs, monkeys and distant temples ensure that sleep is somewhat sporadic. Thank Vishnu for earplugs!
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