More sightseeing...

I have a list of places, parks, museums, and shopping districts in Bangalore and before we leave in two weeks I would love to be able to see all of these things. This weekend we hired a car on Saturday and took tuktuks on Sunday to go see St. Mary's Church, Ulsoor Lake (one of the many lakes in Bangalore), Bugle Rock (a rock outcropping surrounded by gardens), the Aquaruim, and the kids train ride in Cubbon Park. The pictures of Kevin, myself and the boys were taken at the top of Bugle Rock. Bangalore is a very flat city which makes it possible for all 5 of us plus a driver to be taken around by a tuktuk with a small motorcycle engine. If there were any hills, a tuktuk would not make it to the top.  Bugle rock is not very high, probably only 100 metres, but it is one of the few places where land climbs above the flat city.

Lions and Tigers and Bears!

On the weekend we spent a day at Bannerghatta National Park where we took a jeep safari and then walked around the zoo. The safari took us through some very large enclosures where we saw lions, tigers, bears, crocodiles, deer, bison, and wild pigs. After, we walked around the zoo portion of the park and saw snakes, monkeys, zebra, hippopotamus, lepoards, elephants, peacocks and more. The pictures speak for themselves...

The Hotel

We have been spending our mornings in the hotel enjoying a leisurely breakfast, helping the boys with some school work and playing in the pool. The afternoons are spent going for walks in the local neighbourhood or taking a tuktuk to a park or shopping centre. Here are some pictures from the breakfast patio, the pool and our room.

Food

Before I came to India I was intrigued about what the food availability would be, how we get our groceries home, what kind of food stores would be around and so on. I have found that there is a small food store of some sort every few blocks. They are generally about 30 feet by 30 feet or a bit smaller. Where we are staying now, in the neighbourhood of Kormangala, there is a store we can walk to in under 10 minutes. It is similar to other food stores we have shopped at in Bangalore and Goa. Every time I go in, I buy as much as I can carry and I buy similar things because there is not a lot of variety to be found. I buy rice, a variety of dried lentils, cashews, raisins, Muesli cereal, noodles, tea, peanut butter, jam, bread, and butter. Everything is sold in small quantities, which makes it easy to carry home. There is a separate produce stand that takes 15 minutes to walk to where I can get cauliflower, tomatoes, cucumber, carrots, grapes, bananas and apples. I have also found green beans and corn on the cob when we happen to pass a produce cart that is being pushed by a vendor along the side of the road. There is another store, further away so we have to take a tuktuk, where I can get milk (comes in 1 L tetrapacks) and juice. One of the dinners I make is a red lentil stew with cauliflower, carrots and turmeric. I even made my own roti to go with it!
We have been pampered by having breakfast provided by all three of the places we have stayed in India. The first place we stayed provided breakfast in a small dining room on the main floor of the apartment building. The boys had an omelette almost every day while Kevin and I had whatever Indian breakfast they had on offer that day. See the pictures below for some of the dishes. The place we stayed in Goa provided a cook every morning to come to our townhouse and make us breakfast (and clean up the dishes too!). We ate mostly omelettes until we communicated with the cook that we would like a dosa. It took a few days but we did get a couple Indian breakfasts that week. Where we are now has the best selection ever. They do a full buffet breakfast with wonderful fruit, sausage, bacon, toast, cereal, pastries, juices, figs, and a variety of Indian rice and lentil dishes. As well, we can get pancakes, omelettes or dosas made for us. One of the cooks comes out of the kitchen when I bring the boys down for breakfast and asks William if he wants a blueberry pancake :) The waiters are getting to know us quite well and I usually have at least 3 helping me on any given morning (carrying glasses of juice for me, making toast for the boys, playing with the boys, serving me coffee, etc). The customer service is phenomenal and we have breakfast on an outdoor patio with classical music playing in the background...it is lovely!

Playground!

The park right beside the hotel has a playground. It is the first playground we have seen in Bangalore. The boys were excited to play and we have been there two days in a row. Of course there is always something different than what we would expect in Canada. In this case, it is the hours that the playground is open: 6am-10am and 4:30pm-8pm. Not sure if this has to do with the long, leisurely lunches in India or because it is so warm in the middle of day. Kids go to school from 8 to 1:30, then generally nap in the afternoon. Families have dinner anywhere from 9 to 11pm and then the kids go to bed. We have not managed to eat later than 6:30 or 7pm and are almost always in an empty restaurant!

The Beach

The best thing about Goa is the beach. We stayed on Sunset Beach in South Goa. The sand is perfect for the boy's creations, the water is so warm yet it is cool enough to refresh one after being in 35 degree heat, the beach is so quiet, we could spread out and have a big area of sand and surf to ourselves. We spent the majority of the last 7 days sitting on the sand or standing in the waves with the boys and it was perfect. In the last couple of days we collected hermit crabs with a family from Denmark, William built a sand castle with the lifeguard, and we threw a Frisbee around with a young couple from Warsaw, Russia. There are lifeguards stationed along the beach but are not very attentive to the activity in the water and sit about 100feet or more away from the shoreline. This all made much more sense to me after I saw their vehicle drive up the beach. Written on the side of the vehicle is not Dept of Public Safety nor Dept of Parks, but Dept of Tourism :)  So, I didn't feel bad at all when William distracted the lifeguard from his work for almost an hour!

Old Goa

We hired a taxi for the morning and went up to the town of Old Goa. According to Lonely Planet "From the 16th to 18th centuries, when Old Goa's population exceeded that of Lisbon or London, this capital of Goa was considered the 'Rome of the East'. You can still sense that grandeur as you wander the grounds, with its towering churches and cathedral and majestic convents. It's rise under the Portuguese, from 1510, was meteoric, but cholera and malaria outbreaks forced the abandonment of the city in the 1600s."
The exterior of the buildings are magnificent and the carvings inside are very intricate. It was hard to choose what pictures to post here because we took so many. Unfortunately the whole experience was not a contemplative or spiritual one. After listening to our taxi driver try to get us to hire him for another day outing (what happened to enjoying the moment or perhaps finishing today's trip?), we opened the taxi doors at our destination only to be forcefully handed (kids included) candles and loops of flowers and then asked to pay for them. I am glad we took the time to see the town of Old Goa and I am thankful these beautiful buildings are open to the public for free, even if it meant there were lots of tourists like us wandering everywhere :)

A Walk through Richmond Town

Richmond Town is the neighbourhood just north of where we were staying. We went for a walk to see what we could see and to stop at a bank. We are packing around plenty of rupees thanks to some Christmas presents from Kevin's parents and Heather and Scott (thanks guys!) but we have found that it is helpful to have a bunch of 50 and 100 rupee notes instead of the larger bills. Most tuktuk drivers and food/beverage vendors don't like to give change (they will say that they don't have any change at first, then when they realize you won't be able to buy the product they produce some change).
Here are some pictures from our walk (if you have read the book "A Fine Balance" you will know why I took a picture of the tailor shop). There was a whole range of living arrangements- from nice apartments to slums to evidence of people sleeping on the streets. Also you can see the garbage on the sidewalks, this is found everywhere we have been in Bangalore except in UB City (a gaurded multi tower shopping and entertainment district...more on that later).