India - first impressions

Hi everyone. We landed in Bangalore at 5:00 a.m., waited over an hour for luggage, and got rooked at the airport by the "official" taxi stand that was really a car and driver rental. Paid twice as much as we should have, but at least we made it to town okay. Not sure why the Indian government wastes paint on the lines in the road - drivers don't pay any attention to them. And, we think there's an untapped export business that could boom in India. They should just remove their turn signal light bulbs and sell them to countries that actually use them. Or they could trade them for new horns, since I"m sure those have to be replaced often because of overuse.

Bangalore - hmmmmm. What can we say about Bangalore? It was interesting for the first couple of hours, but by about 7:00 pm we'd decided that we would leave first thing the next morning (this morning). After checking in to our hotel, we immediately headed out to wander around town. This place is the opposite of Vietnam. In Vietnam things started hopping by 5:00 a.m. Here, nothing opened until 11:00. Very strange, indeed. We had some good food for lunch - it just wouldn't be a Mark and Mary blog if food didn't factor in now, would it? Lunch was a paper dosa (thanks for the recommendation Per!) for Mary and samosas for Mark - de-lish! And lots of chai.

Dinner was another delicious affair with pooris and coconut gravy (which tasted much better than it sounds) and masala dosa and stuffed pratha and lassis. We're leaning towards vegetarian fare in order to minimize risk of sickness. So far, so good. No Delhi belly or trots or stomach pains for either of us so far. The Indian guy puking out the window on the bus this morning reminded Mark to stay vigilant.

The bus ride to Mysore this morning was a bit of an adventure. We thought we'd get up early, go to the bus station, get a ticket at a central kiosk, then pick up some snacks and get on our bus at the alloted time. Perhaps not surprisingly, it didn't work out that way. The station has 50 - 75 buses idling or slowly rolling towards the exit and we were directed to one of them by the locals. We jumped on, and then paid once the bus started rolling out of town. A bit chaotic, but it seems to work. No time to pick up snacks though. It cost a whopping $2.00 for our four hour journey... You guessed it! We were NOT on a tourist bus. But at least there were no goats or chickens! Nice to get out into the countryside for a bit though.

We are now in Mysore where we felt like we were in a Bollywood movie as were driven around in an auto rickshaw by a driver and his little brother, Mustafa. Mustafa must be all of 12 years old, and befriended Mark. He took us to the "real" India - the market that was not so busy and lucky us, only happened once a week. Uh huh. Right. At any rate, it was fun, and no harm was done. I am now the owner of some some lotus oil that is apparently the base for all mosquito repellent. Just a drop will do you - I'll let you know how that goes.

Later we wandered around another market where we were accosted by all manner of kids that wanted to know "what country?" and when we replied Canada, asked "French part or English part". It was humorous to reply "French part" in English and watch them practice their French. Ha!

Time to sign out now. Sorry, we forgot the adapter for photos, so will edit this post soon to add them.

Cheers,
Mary & Mark