A Swift Return To Bangalore

We agreed that as we were going to be in Bangalore for only 1 night, we would stay in a dormitory so we could be in the central district.  Most dorms that are mentioned in the book are around 50 rupees per person per night, this place was 213 per person per night.  Anyway on agreeing this it was decided that we were going to go shopping, especially Lush (Bangalore houses the only Lush's in India, Heather HAD to go!) and see Casino Royale.

We arrived in Bangalore knowing we were going to go over budget and the whole experience was a lot better once we realised that fact.  We both fancied a sandwich and the first place we saw about 50 metres down the road from us was a Subway.  On the same street there was a McDonald's, KFC and a Pizza Hut too!  The sarnie was pretty cheap and was just what both of us wanted.  The blowout weekend was starting pretty well.

Just before we'd got to Subway we'd passed an old relic of a cinema and bought our tickets to Casino Royale.  They were around 1.50.  The downside to this was the film had been cut.  The 'love' scenes and the 'torture' scene had been cut and the amount of film roll cut had been given.  It was pretty strange to see that sort of information given.

It turned out we'd made a good decision in buying the tickets before lunch.  When we arrived about 30 mins later the film had sold out.  When we got in it was a totally new experience.  The cinema was in an old hall with really basic seating.  However when the film started the fun really began.  The Indian's went wild for Bond, screaming and cheering and hollering when he came onto screen or did anything vaguely interesting.  There was also an interval which really surprised me.  I know they have intervals for Bollywood films because they are so long, but I didn't expect they would for a 2 and a bit hour film.  It was really something to watch a film there.  It felt more like an experience.  The only problem was that people's phones were going off left, right and centre and people were having conversations on the phone while watching the film.  Other than that it was really good.

The Sunday was a bit of a pain in the arse day.  We had to check out by 11am but we weren't getting the bus to Mangalore until 10.30 that evening.  We asked the guys at the hostel to look after our bags and said we'd collect them a little bit later.  9 hours later probably was taking the mick a little bit though.  During this time we got ourselves some books, finally getting hold of the Bourne books, I've wanted them for so long!!  We managed to get rid of our old books and once we'd done that we had nothing left to do in Bangalore.  That was all well and good, but we'd finished all this by 2pm.  This left us with the only option of going to the pub.  We obviously didn't want to go but we had to purely to keep us from being bored!! Yeah right!

While we were there we met up with a couple of English guys. One was working with IBM in Bangalore and is given an allowance a day by the company.  It turned out it was an allowance he couldn't possibly spend in India so he was buying our drinks all afternoon!  The other guy was having a month traveling India and was flying home that night.  We thought we'd be nice and ask him to have dinner with us.  We went to a TGI Friday type place for burgers and at the end of the meal he said that he'd pay for our meal.

We finished dinner a little bit later than we should have done and we were cutting it fine to get the bus to Mangalore.  We got in the rickshaw and told him we had to be the other side of the city ASAP and he drove like a madman all the way there.  We went through about 3 red lights and was just speeding everywhere.  We even went part of the way round a roundabout the wrong way.  I was in fear for my life all the way.

Thankfully we reached the Bus stop and the bus pulled in literally 20 seconds after we got there.  We had been so lucky all day so knowing sods law it was gonna change and sure enough it was about to with our bus journey to Mangalore.