Back in Bangalore

I'm back in Bangalore and of course the screwiness begins :)


Yesterday Billie and I went to a crafts fair on MG Road. Seeing as she stays out in Whitefield she hired a taxi through her hotel and came to pick me up. So the taxi driver has been on the job for one week and not only does he not speak English he also doesn't know Bangalore. Lord knows where we would have wound up if we weren't paying attention to the route he was using to get us from the Leela to MG Road. As it was he went past the turn and we had to tell him to make a u-turn. But we did finally make it to our destination.


The crafts fair was pretty cool. It was government sponsored which means the vendors and the quality of the goods has to be a certain standard - in other words they can't tell you something is leather when it's not. So we meandered about the craft fair for a couple of hours - bought some items and decided we had enough.


Our driver was waiting in the parking lot and we get into the car and the engine won't start. Our driver decides he's going to pop the clutch to see if that will work. So he has 3 other guys come over to push the car with Billie and I inside. In the meantime I'm trying to let him know if Billie and I get out of the car it will be a lot easier to push but I might as well have been talking to a brick wall. So the three guys push the car through the parking lot and then out on to the street. Meanwhile the engine still isn't popping over and I'm thinking to myself this is an accident waiting to happen. The driver is coasting down the side street - in the opposite direction of MG Road where we could have found an autorickshaw and an ATM - and Billie and I are just looking at each other. I said to her - it's a good thing this isn't my first or second day in Bangalore because I'd be freaking out - now I'm a seasoned vet so I just take this all in stride. Anyway, about halfway down the block he stops the car - and not over to the side of the road - just in the middle of the block. He gets out - opens the hood and starts fiddling about. We have no idea if he's out of gas - or if something else is wrong and Billie has called her hotel to have them send another taxi and all of a sudden he gets the car started. So off we went - me back to the Leela and Billie back to Whitefield. When I saw her in the office today she confirmed the car made it back without breaking down again.

Always an adventure.

It was nice when I arrived back in the leela to have everyone say how nice it was to see me again - probably lying through their teeth. I'm very upset though because Krishna, my floor butler, now starts work at 8pm and I never see him. Apparently he told the new floor butler all about me though because he's taking pretty good care of me as well.


That's all for now.