India Bengaluru

We arrived in Bengaluru at 6am, the bus dropped us off on the side of a busy road surrounded by people, cars, rickshaws, stalls, litter and cows, lots of cows. It was a lot to take in given we had been awake about 5 minutes! Prior to this, we hadn’t seen any cows walking the streets and dominating the traffic, and we were starting to believe that this was just a myth about India. We took a rickshaw to the main bus/train station where we attempted a shower.This comprised of a room with a bucket and tap in it. The men’s showers must have been cleaner as somehow Tom managed to have a real shower and even wash his hair! Lucy could not face taking her shoes off as there were many questionable stains on the floor and attempted a shower with her trainers on.
Once half showered we left our bags in the cloak room at the station and headed in to town to find some breakfast. We headed to MG road as this was meant to be a busy area only to find at 10am it was pretty dead! Finally we found a little cafe and had a Masala Dosa (a pancake filled with curry) which was delicious. We spent the rest of the day visiting parks and exploring bars, including Bangalore Brew Works – a microbrewery situated ten floors up with an amazing view, and an even better selection of beers, a stout and a coconut pale ale washed away the sleepiness and interesting washing procedures!
In the evening we retuned back to MG road to see what it was really like and it was a completely different world. A street lined with high end bars and restaurants worlds apart from the cows and litter filled streets we had seen earlier in the day! We grabbed some food and a drink before boarding our next sleeper bus, finding the Bengaluru equivalent of Belgrave Music Hall and Canteen in Leeds. We were to catch the night bus from the side of a road next to a hotel which we are pretty sure doesn’t exist. With minutes to spare after running around wth heavy backpacks on past numerous of wrong buses, we finally found ours!