The 'Garden City' that lacks gardens...

the central feature of Bangalores Botanical Garden
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Leaving Hampi and our bongo teacher, Abdul, behind we set off for Madurai, via Bangalore and here we stopped for almost 12 hours waiting for our onward train connection.

On the train we met a friendly chap who showed us to a much needed restroom (present at many bus/train stations), where Rs40 got us a garden chair recliner in a quiet room and a warm shower. The idea was to pay baksheesh to the Indians to sort you out with warm water but Sara didn't catch on to this and used the remains of someone else's dirty bathwater!

Shortly after comfortably relaxing with my book in hand under a large tree - the park's sprinkler system came online and in a flash i found myself soaked to the bone...

My bag has reached a ridiculous weight and i have decided that since i've had little or no use of my fleece and walking boots i will be mailing them home. This proved to be fairly difficult and we sent from one domestic post office to the next until a taxi driver took us to the virtually out-of-town General PO. Here they sewed our parcel into a silk bag and costing Rs1330 to send 7kg. What a laborious process!

That afternoon we took a tuk-tuk to one of Bangalore's few green spaces - the Botanical Gardens. The city used to be a modern oasis, however, following its rapid growth and massive underinvestment in transport and social infrastructure - the city is very chaotic causing many foreign investors to move away in recent years.

Now thinking we would be able to find a quiet spot in the gardens to practice our amateur bongo playing we set off with our lunch in search of a shaded spot. Oh how wrong were we...no sooner had we started banging out a simple beat but a crowd of no less than 17 Indians appeared eager to hear us!! Severely lacking in confidence we declined their offer but they failed to take the hint and we had to pack up in search of quieter spot for reading (George Orwell's 1984).

En route Soz got attacked by a monkey who saw her lunch and i was forced to step in a scare it off with make-believe monkey noises. Shortly after comfortably relaxing with my book in hand under a large tree - the park's sprinkler system came online and in a flash i found myself soaked to the bone...a nasty surprise that sent me back to the station in a somewhat damp condition.