Riding in a rikshaw is pretty much like taking a ride in a joyride – keep all your limbs in the carriage, try not to fall out and enjoy. The beeping and tooting of various horns and the smells of the city (both in good and in bad) are a feature, not a bug.

The food is great, no doubt about it.
So far Le Méridien has been more than I expected, the pool is surprisingly long and the service is impeccable.

There are a huge number of hawks circling in the sky during daytime, plus some swallows and common pigeons. The hotel has its own geese, the function of which I haven’t yet grasped. Dinner…? Conveniently close, I’d have to admit.

Everyone’s been telling me how India smells bad and/or strange, but nothing too particular so far. Ok, there are open sewers in places and the waste disposal could be more efficient, but nothing impossible. And you get the whiffs of incence and fragrances of flowers and fruit every once in a while – something that’s very much missing from home.

And no, we haven’t been cold. Not in the very least. During the day it’s around +30 and above, but since it’s not humid, it’s very very tolerable, even enjoyable. Yeah, a sweat is easy to break by simply being there in the sun, but living is easy…

So, all in all very pretty indeed, but the contrasts between poverty and richness are very striking as well. Makes me consider myself very lucky when I think the drinkable (free) water in our taps. Water is something of a sought-after resource down here, and it’s not a commodity that everyone takes for granted.

Tags: food, hotels, luxuries, money, people in india, previsit, service, swimming, traffic, weather

Walking out of the office was exceptionally joyful today. My vacation started, I have found a really nice apartment and everything is in place for taking off tomorrow. If I believed in some cosmic balance, I would already be waiting for setbacks and guessing what they could be.

Instead I enjoyed a nice, spicy Murgh Tikka and Stuffed Kulcha dinner in the hotel restaurant for 330 rupees (around 5 euros). I have a conservative hunch that 90 per cent of Finnish people would have left it uneaten due to excessive amounts of chili it contained, and even I broke a nice sweat during the dinner. After all the chicken was not that hot, but the problem was that I didn’t have anything for breaking the burn for a while (rice, milk, or white bread – the kulcha was stuffed with spices). I anyway ate the whole thing, but I might encounter a ring of fire the next morning. What better way there is to start a holiday?

By the way, I found the post office and got my package on its way. The central post office of Bangalore is a large, old building that would easily qualify as a mosque from the outside. Inside I was a little lost and it took me a while to figure out how the system works. I had to visit two different counters, one for the packaging of the parcel and one for the actual mailing process. Getting instructions was somewhat difficult, so here’s how it goes:

You first have to make sure there are no liquids in the package (presumably they are prohibited for some reason) and preferably pack the stuff in a cardboard box. Then you find the packaging counter, where the cardboard box is taped firmly shut and wrapped in fabric. The packager actually sews a pouch around the package while you fill in the customs declaration. You should be able to identify each item or item category (“foodstuff” is too general, “idols” should be fine) along with the weight and value of each item/group. On top of all this, two identical copies must be written, of course by hand. Finally you will be given a worn-out marker for writing in the address to the surface of the fabric. It is a good idea to bring your own marker just in case.

After all this you get to take your package to another counter for weighing and payment. The customs declarations should be attached by now and the address should be clearly visible. The fee will be determined by weight, destination country and type of transport (sea or air). My 3.4 kilograms of sea freight to Finland cost 820 rupees or about 13 euros, but may take up to three months to arrive. For some reason I didn’t ask the air fare, but I presume it would have been significantly more expensive. Maybe next time.

In fourteen hours I will be on my way to the airport, so it’s about time I get some sleep now.  I don’t feel like Xmas at all, but on the other hand I think it was exactly what I was looking for: something completely different, as inspired by a brilliant group of British comedians.

Brace yourselfs, I’m about to fly again.

Tags: accommodation, food, holiday, hotels, planning, post, practical stuff, prices, service, travel, ways of working, work

For once I wanted to have something particularly non-Indian, so I went for lunch to the local Pizza Hut. I am getting used to taking a rikshaw now that I know the price range, so it took me only a good five minutes to reach Brigade road. That was the only quick thing in the whole lunch, since of course the Hut would be crowded as hell on Saturday afternoon. On the way I spotted this:

It took almost an hour from my entry to the point when I finally got the food, including a twenty-minute wait between getting the menu and having my order taken. To add injury to insult, I ordered only a personal size pizza and was left hungry after all the trouble. The price of the meal, including a nice cooler drink, was a reasonable 300 rupees (around 5 euros), but the visit wasn’t really worth it. I will have to try my luck again another time, definitely not in the middle of the weekend rush. It didn’t exactly cheer me up to see the all-American decoration overflow landing to India too:

I made the mistake of trying to catch a rikshaw from the north end of Brigade road, the worst of all those tourist traps. The best offer of a 20 rupee distance was 50 rupees (the most ridiculous one was 100), so I decided to walk instead. Luckily I had my camera with me, so I snapped a bunch of photos to illustrate the overall look of streets in Bangalore. This is what I came up with (and here you can find the rest):

Cost-efficient transportation of goods

These traps are all over the walkways…

…even in front of these

And especially these

Walking around here is significantly different, but I seem to get used to it pretty quickly. I know my way around the most important places already and I have an understanding of the distances, so I am not that likely to be cheated on anymore. Living here doesn’t look that bad at all.

Tags: food, people in india, photos, practical stuff, prices, service, time, traffic, transportation, what is different

Today’s menu has been exceptionally good and my stomach is singing hallelujah as I write. In the ISKCON temple there was a restaurant for pilgrims, with the best bang for buck ratio I have seen so far. For lunch we had Masala Dosa, a traditional Indian pizza kind of thing.  It is made of rice flour and lentils, has some ketchup-kind of sauce on the surface and a filling of potato and onion. Tasty, rich in nutrition, appealing with smooth texture and all this for mere 20 rupees(!). My general feeling of the temple was that they are only covering their own cost, which makes sense since they are probably trying to recruit more people rather than make a lot of profit. Two thumbs for price vs. quality!

For dinner I went to Bombay Post on the other side of Airport Road, right next to TGI Friday’s. The place was really tidy, well-maintained and even classy, with nice waiter uniforms and stylish interior design. The menu was really long and choices were plenty, but I went for Sheek Kabab this time. It was like long, spicy meatballs made of lamb and fried well. I had mine with rice, Butter Naan and a pint of Kingfisher. The term pint is not exactly what I expected it to be, even though it is a former colony of Britain. The usual serving of beer is actually 650 millilitres, while a pint refers to a bottle of 330 milliliters. This is good to keep in mind if the servings seem too big.

The food in Bombay Post  was excellent and the whole experience was… intense. Not a single moment went by without a waiter being close by, ready to fill my glass or serve some more lamb to my plate. If I ran out of some side dish, it didn’t take more than a minute before I had a new portion on my table. The service was really good, but the price policy had some undocumented extras hidden inside. First of all, the list prices didn’t include taxes, and second, they charged a service percentage of everything. Looking at the list, the dish was less than 300 rupees, so I estimated the total to be somewhere around 700 with drinks, rice and bread. I was in for a surprise when I got the bill with a total of 1067 rupees with everything included. Although the food was good, I think it was not worth that much.

Next time in that district I’ll try the third place, Indijoe. It should be a chain restaurant, so the possibilities are there.

Tags: food, prices, religion, service, surprises