Back to Bangalore….

 

Now I need to return to Bangalore to catch up with the weekend prior to our Pune trip…..

The last post was about the Ganesha Festival day and it was a big one!!  The following morning things were quieter with the new shrine set up but the stage and seating gone……

Now, Michael and I had been eating almost entirely vegetarian food and it had been wonderful, but we decided that Friday evening called for a little bit of meat….. RED meat!!!

We contacted our driver who sent another young man to take us back to Sunny’s restaurant where we had gone early in our stay.

The first thing that we ordered were drinks and I decided to have a Corona….

IT COST $7.50, but it sure tasted good.

For appetizer, we had avocado with tomatoes and onions and a sauce that reminded me of thin Catalina dressing…..

The second appetizer was a Thai chicken kabob…..

Both were excellent and a great start to our meal.

We had nice main courses but then ordered dessert….Michael had Tiramisu and I ordered a Swiss Chocolate torte.   This house shaped cake appeared with the top part being a dense fudge, and surrounded with a vanilla cream….

YUMMY!!!

I had to take a photo of the back of this water bottle…..

The brand is called Himalaya (pronounced Him..mall..ya).

On the way home we passed another Ganesha site, this one much bigger than our local temple…..

Saturday was a quiet day with Michael teaching the last session of his course.  I had a few errands to do and enjoyed a few more street scenes.   Firstly there were these three ladies with their hefty burdens neatly perched on their heads….

….and these shoppers who wanted to park as close to the store as possible….

I also had an interesting interchange while shopping.  People are bad to cut in line in front of you and one man did exactly that, plopping his purchase down on the counter in front of mine.   He saw me looking (well maybe glaring) at him and he stepped back in line and told the cashier that I was first.   THEN, two young men pushed ahead of me and put their purchases on the counter.  The cashier just smiled at me and picked up my stuff first, making the kids wait.  When he opened his cash drawer I could see two of the coin areas were filled with small candies and when he gave me my change, he included two of them…it was a sweet interchange, AND, I appear to have developed a typical India head-waggle when I say thank you!!!

On Saturday evening, we were invited to have dinner with Sukumar and his wife, Sudha.  Sukumar was Michael’s host at the Indian Institute of Science when we were here in 2008.  We had a lovely dinner in their home and enjoyed hearing of Sukumar’s work with the elephants of India.   He has written a gorgeous book called “The Story of Asia’s Elephants” which explores the mammal as seen in science, literature and art.  

On the way to his house we passed a Ganesha parade that was heading to the water for the dunking.    There were lots of drums…..

…and some other interesting looking characters as well…..I’m not sure why this young man has been captured…..

We passed one lake that had a concrete “cage” in one corner and there was a rather large Ganesha already soaking in it.   We have since heard that this is one of the “approved” areas for the statues to be submerged because it wont disturb the ecology of the lake.

On Sunday morning, Michael was suffering with a head cold so we skipped out on church but in the afternoon we had a dinner planned with the students from his course. 

In the last few years, Bangalore has developed a beer culture and many Micro-breweries have sprung up and we were headed to “The Bier Garden”.  It was quite hectic trying to get enough taxis to take us all to the restaurant and rounding up the students seemed a bit like Corralling Kittens!!!

One ordered taxi didn’t show up so we “commandeered” another one and the driver and two students vociferously discussed how much the trip would cost.   Michael and I both had visions of being dumped out along the side of the road.

Our group was the first to arrive and snapped up the best seats at the LONG table, a couch that would seat four!!!   The only problem was that we had to all work together to scoot the couch in or out  so one of the students (Gaurab) started referring to us as “Team Couch”.  

As we started ordering, the captain of “Team Couch” mentioned that they served bacon wrapped sausages.  How could we resist…..

This set the tone for the evening as we plowed our ways thru plates of onion rings (isn’t this a great way to serve them)…..

….hamburger platters…..

……and MANY other delicious dishes.

This was the “Vegetarian” corner and all “Veg Only” dishes were passed their way first…..

There was an exceptional trio playing, although they specialized in songs from the “Peter, Paul and Mary” era.

Michael and I laughed that we were certainly the only ones at the table who remembered the first iteration of these songs, and were probably the only ones in the entire bar who were old enough to remember them!!!

When dessert time came, I chose the chocolate cake which ended up being a lava cake with ice cream that was magnificent……

When I asked this young man what his dessert tasted like, his answer was “pink”!!!

Here is the happy group…..

….followed by Krushnamegh sorting out the VERY hefty bill….

The night ended much as it had begun with 15 people trying to find taxis to take us back to NCBS.  Fortunately, two of the students took pity on us and ensured that we were safely chauffeured back to our apartment!!!

Tomorrow we head to Pune!!!!