Sunny, Nice Days

Sunny, Nice Days

Friday, Dec. 1, 2006--Bangalore

Met Shabbir, an architect I've been communicating with, at a nearby restaurant at 11:00. We had a late breakfast and visited. We ate the set dosa which was three small, soft unsweet pancakes served with a green coconut chutney and with the usual spicy vegetable curry that is eaten in South India. We followed that with a cup of milk tea. He's a Muslim, so he had to leave at 1:00 for the main Friday prayer session in the afternoon. We had fun visiting, however, and he said he would try to call back on Sunday and maybe meet me again.

I took the bus to the airport, since I was having trouble getting Lufthansa. There city office was not where it was supposed to have been. And I had tried about 6 phone numbers that didn't work. I wanted to get a seat assignment for my flight Tuesday night/Wednesday morning before all the aisle seats were taken. At the airport, I found there is a charge just to go into the terminal. I went to the manager's office to try to see how to reach them. He gave me two more numbers. Neither of them were correct either, but one was to their cargo office, and they gave me two more numbers! One of those numbers did not answer. The other answered and told me they could only sell tickets. I had to keep calling the first number until someone answered. Finally, I got through and got a seat. Unfortunately, it is fairly far back in the plane, but it is an aisle seat.

The route to the airport was fairly interesting, and it was only about 10 km (6 miles) from my hotel. So I decided to walk back. It went past military installations, malls, parks, etc. It took me about 2 1/2 hours to get back to the hotel. It would have been a bit quicker, but I took a turn when I was almost back that took me out of the way a bit.

For dinner, I went to an Andhra-style restaurant. That means the food was cooked with recipes from the state of Andhra Pradesh where Hyderabad is. They are known for their spicy foods and particularly for their biriyanis. I ordered the mutton biriyani and got the full size (3 pieces of mutton) instead of the smaller plate with only 2 pieces. It came with a spicy gravy to put over the rice and with a small bowl of yogurt-onion salad. The meat was very tender and tasty. It was so nice to have something other than chicken for a change. I washed it all down with a fresh lime soda.

Indians use the word "bucks" as slang for rupees just as we use it for dollars in the U.S. They probably adopted it from its use in U.S. movies. My mutton biriyani was 55 bucks here (which converts to just over 1 buck in the U.S.).

Saturday, Dec. 2, 2006--Bangalore

I stayed in the room and read almost all the morning. Finally, about 11:30, I went out. I first walked to the YMCA nearby because my guidebook had said they had a nice cafe there. But they didn't. I guess it closed sometime after the guidebook was printed or there is another YMCA elsewhere. Anyway, from there, I decided to walk to town and try to find the Subway Sandwich Shop near Commercial Road. I did find it and had a chicken tikka sandwhich. It was so nice to have all the fresh vegetables. The chicken was very tasty, too. And they made the sandwich spicy for me. It was about $3 U.S. for a 6 inch sub, a bag of chips, and a medium Coke.

That area of town was too crowded. The streets are narrow, yet traffic is not stricted. Cars and people filled the roadway and made me uncomfortable. I headed back toward the hotel walking through Cubbon Park, a really nice, but park that has lots of trails and wooded areas.

When I got back to the hotel, my room still wasn't cleaned. After using the toilet, I left to come here to the cyber cafe. It's now about 4:00 p.m., so I will be heading back to the hotel to rest until time to go to dinner tonight.