Bangalore, India.  I would say that my first impression is that it’s an all out assault on the senses.  First is the smells- from within the buildings and of course outside.  I can’t describe it, it’s like nothing you get in NA.  It’s like the food in that the smells are complex.  It’s different in different buildings… especially the temples.  Some I liked, some I found pretty powerful.  Jasmine is also very popular.

Sights- the city itself is about 5 million, and it’s a mishmash of modern buildings, older stone structures that look like a bomb went off nearby, elaborate, ornate temples, rubble on the street, signage everywhere, and of course, people/cars/scooters/bikes/motorbikes/3 wheeled bike/buses/cows/stray dogs.

Traffic- if you can drive in Bangalore, you can drive anywhere.  I’ve never seen anything like it, and I can’t do it justice with words so I’ll just include a clip.  Sound wise, horns are going off constantly.  People use their horns instead of signalling it seems.

Everything is on the left side a la the UK.  If there are 4 lanes, you can have 2 buses, 3 cars or vans, 3 or 4 motorcyles, 2 or 3 of those 3 wheeled things all lined up at the same time.  And at the same time, you have peds and cyclists running across the 3 lanes plus other cars from the opposite lane making a right trying to cut through.  If you see an opening, you just go… forget shoulder checking.  The main thing that got me was the personal space.  If you jam so many vehicles together, you are only going to have 2 inches between you and the next car… or motorbike… or pedestrian.

If I roll down the window and stick my hand out.  I will lose fingers within 15 seconds… that’s how thick the traffic is.

There’s a lot of stop/go, race to the gaps, honking to move slower cars out of the way. crossing lanes is madness, nobody stops for pedestrians.  You pretty much keep the pedal down and honk to let everyone smaller than you know you’re coming.  I normally don’t get motion sickness in cars, but I came pretty close a few time.

My driver’s name was Babu. Nice guy, but his english was just ok.  We had some pretty interesting conversations.  In India, when you hire a car, it comes with a driver, and he’s there the entire time.  YOu tell him what time to pick you up.  He drives you to the office, and remains with the car until you’re done.  As I was working 9am to 7pm, I told him to come back at around 7pm.  No, he wouldn’t.  He’s paid to stay there the entire day.  I felt bad for him sitting in the lot for 10 hours.  The cost of this for a week was about 250CDN.  And this is with asking him to drive me around sightseeing, a bit of shoppping, and driving me to the airport at 11pm.

The other thing I noticed is that Indians are very service oriented- like at the hotel, they always greet you, offer to help you with your bags.  Even little things like I’m waiting for my car, I see him parked 5 yards away, and as I walk over, the doorman stops me, tells me to wait while the car drives 5 yards to the front.  At restaurants, you basically don’t do anything but eat.  They spoon everything on your plate.  If you’re done what’s on your plate and you want more, instead of reaching out for the serving spoon, you flag the guy to put more on your plate.  Tipping is also hard to figure out.  You don’t tip % wise.  If a lunch is 1000 rupees, you tip maybe 22 rupees?

Personal space was another issue I had to get used to.  If there’s a 3 seat bench, and I’m sitting at the end, a stranger will plunk himself down next to you.  Same with restaurants.  If there’s 2 of you, and there’s a table for 4, you sit next to each other and it’s not uncommon for a stranger to come and share you table across from you.

8:20am local time Frankfurt.  Another grueling leg of the journey is complete, although I don’t know if my knees and bum are going to recover.  One more flight to go before I reach home.

I have a 5hr stopover, so I cleaned up a bit, looked at some of the shops to see if I could get a deal on Zeiss lenses or german watches.  When I do the conversion from Euro to CDN for a 4000Euro watch or the 10000 Euro gold Leica… ouch!

I must say that anywhere I travel I will try to take a laptop with me.  That and a plug adaptor kit so I won’t look like an idiot for forgetting the India uses the same plug as the UK.  The laptop is great cuz wifi is available most places, so you can quickly hook up and do some research or catch up on email/news from home.  It also makes an ok DVD player.  I brought a few movies with me that I watched when I got tired of the local news or the Indian soaps.  Out of the 65 channels, 50 of them are playing Indian soaps. 

So my first full day in India.  I got up, showered, and went down for breakfast.  The first thing I kept reminding myself about was water discipline.  Basically don’t let your mouth come in contact with anything but bottled water.  Why?  As JHo eloquently put it- think of India as Mexico with bigger and badder germs.  Enough said.

I browsed through the breakfast buffet- standard fare- bacon, eggs, hash, french toast, bread for toast.  However there was also an Indian section- Pongol sweet, Pongal regular, and a bunch of other dishes that look like various currys and flat bread.  Looks yummy, but for breakfast?  They also had an egg and crepe section.  Lots of fresh, cut up fruit and lots of juices- pomegranate, pineapple, mango, young coconut are the ones I remember.  There was also a yoghurt station with apple and various fruit compote.

Here’s what sucks about travelling for work in India.  My primary goal there is work. As I only have a week, I can’t afford any down time, which means I have to be extra careful about what I eat/drink.  That means avoid the cut fruit, some of the juices if I don’t know where it’s from, tap water, and dairy. 

If I was on holidays, I’d experiment and try out a lot more things.  Anyways, I order an omelete with onion, ham, and Masala.  Man did my taste buds ever have a great time.  New, complex flavors combined with the familiar egg/onion turned a regular omelete into something I never thought an omelete could be.

This is a nice seque to food.  It’s pretty clear that Indian cuisine is heavy on the spices according to NA standards.  I would say that everything served in India is “Indianafied”  For example, I had Chinese for my first lunch.  Rice/noodles/soup… standard fare.  But when you taste it, right away you notice extra spices have been added to give it “depth.” 

I had Aloo gobi, a regional fish, and butter chicken.  Again, an explosion in your mouth… comparing the same dishes at home with the real ones in India is like comparing a post card with the real thing.  The dishes just had that extra dimension, more and stronger flavors… more depth.  Fabulous.

However everything is like that… lunch and dinner.  By day 3, my appetite just waned, although my nose and taste buds wanted more.  I don’t know if it was my body not wanting to have such heavy meals twice daily, or if the Malarone pills were messing with my appetite.  But that really didn’t stop me from trying different things.

First up is dairy.  I don’t know what it is- super happy cows, but I had a mango milkshake with dinner one night.  It was room temperature-ish, and I took a gulp.  Nothing registered in my brain for a few seconds… and then it was like the Mango center in my brain/taste buds just exploded and it was like having Mango for the first time.  Same with the ice-cream- happy cows=happy ice cream..

Another meal I ordered fresh mango juice.  I waited about 10 minutes before getting it.  Here in NA, they would just pout it into your glass from a jug.  When it came, again it was room temp… but I noticed that the juice was much more viscous.  I took a sip, and wow.  What they do is peel and squeeze the mangoes.  It’s as fresh as it gets.

However by the end of the week, I wanted some more simple fare.  My appetite was not100% and I just craved something simple like Sushi or noodles.  On the menu, they had baby corn battered in Mangalore spices where they take the baby corn, roll it in batter and deep fry it.  I love baby corn, so I give it a go.  It was very good, but I find that baby corn in itself has a subtle favor and that the Mangalorean spices just overpowered it.  

To sum up, fantastic flavors with lots of depth.  The tandoori chicken was marvelous.  However I just could not eat that much of it.  Imagine going to Tandoori King for 2 meals a day for a week, and that’s kinda how I felt.  I’ll include some pics I took of some dishes at lunch.

Next up, first impressions of the City, Traffic, Cultural differences, and Religion. 

So I packed my bags and left last Saturday to fly 20 hours to pretty much the opposite side of the world.  I had no idea what to expect, the longest flight I had ever taken was to London, and that is less than half the time to Bangalore.  I found the hardest part was to leave E, and especially e behind.  I had become so accustomed to having her as a part of my daily routine, that it felt strange to not be there for her.

To give an idea of what I mean, I saw a clip of Tiger woods talking about the birth of his daughter… it about the experience of loving something so much, something that did not exist the day before.  I think people bond with their babies at different rates, some it’s immediate, some not.  For me, it started when e first grabbed my finger at 2 minutes old, and it’s grown steadily since… so I found it a bit hard to say goodbye.

My cab driver was from India, so we had a nice chat about monsoon season, and what to expect.  One annoying thing is having to show up so early for international flights.  2-3 hours.  I understand that security and checkin takes time, but I think they do this partly to spread out the rush, otherwise everyone would try to get onboard 30 min before flighttime.

I had a good 90 min to kill after passing security, so I bought a litre of water- $3.50 cdn and just chilled at the gate. 

I flew Lufthansa to Bangalore via Frankfurt.  The plane was a BIG airbus 300, and it was packed.  I didn’t notice this until later, but I think I was the only asian onboard.  I had the aisle seat and a Portuguese girl sat next to me.  She was flying home after working the Vancouver to Alaska cruise lines selling jewelry.  She pointed out a lot of her other crewmembers who were flying home to Europe, and other Europeans who were on the cruise.  Anyways, being on a plane was new for her, and she was pretty much breaking all the rules- yakking on the cell phone and reclining her seat during takeoff.  The Turkish couple in front told her that the cell phone will damage the planes electronics, and must be turned off.  Uh huh.

Anyways I won’t comment on how pretty she was because I’ll get punched by my wife… and honey, I didn’t bring my wedding ring because I didn’t want to lose it in a foreign country.

Although the plane is big, everyone is packed in so the space is more like what you find on a domestic flight.  Not great for 10 hours in the air.  Behind was a family with 2 small boys- at the age where they can talk, but there’s no volume control.  To occupy them, they had a small video game unit, with I’m guessing a violent game.  They were yelling “Get the bullets!! Over there, over there!!!”  Great.  In situations like these, IPOD is your friend.

I tried to sleep, but it was hard to sustain it for any length of time.  It really becomes a mental challenge- looking at your watch and seeing that you’re nearing your limit, but only 2 hours have passed.  😐

About the 8 hour mark, you’re over Europe, and the thought that crossed my mind was “I’m less than 50% of the way there”  Owwwww…  the best word I can use to describe sitting on a plane for 10 hours, unable to move is “ordeal”

The other helpful tip is to bring a pharmacy with you onboard.  Decongestant, gum, gravol, painkillers… 

We finally landed in Frankfurt- 2:50am PST, and 10:50am local time.  My connecting flight was leaving in 40 min, and we had yet to get off the plane and take the bus to the terminal.  Run Forest run…

The first indication that I was going to another world was at gate B45… FRA to BLR on a 747.  Again I was the only asian, and there was a handful of Europeans… and the rest of the flight was filled with Indians.  Not like 72nd and Scott Rd, but very traditionally dressed Indians.  Only 9.5 hours over europe, Serbia/yugoslavia, turkey, middle east, and finally India…