Thursday, January 6, 2011

Arriving in Bangalore



I've been travelling for about 36 hours straight except for my hyper-tour of Dubai. On the flight into Bangalore I was so tired the lines between when I was thinking and dreaming became pretty blurred. You ever get that? When you know for sure you were thinking about something significant and next thing you know you're awake from dozing off. Anyway I'm tired.
I finally land and at the immigration line and see a cute, non-threatening looking Indian girl next to me. So I ask her if she is around here and she tells me shes visitng as well. I don't know if it was my disarming smile or difficult sounding situation but when I told here I was travelling alone she told me she'd introduce me to her friend who is picking her up and is a Bangalore native. Perfect.
Rahol gives great tips on whats worth checking out, gives me his number, tells me a good place to eat, and finally tells me my hotel is far from the airport. Like 1.5h far...Stupid trip advisor, you are 0/1
i realize that with the hotel being far away its prob best to drop a I decide it would be an excellent time to drop a deuce before an 1.5 hour journey in a car in the middle of who knows where, so I make my way back to the airport entrance and find guards checking everyone's boarding pass who gets in. I try to explain with my boarding pass stub and e-ticket that I JUST landed, and I would like to go back and use the bathroom/washroom/toilet (I had no idea if they were understanding me and I tried every synonym for "the place where you do your business" as possible.) After trying to explain this to 4 people I'm told I can't go back in and I have to use the bathroom outside across the parking lot...which i had a bad feeling about
i go to the bathroom, and slowly open the stall door anticipating what im going to see and there it is: toilet, small faucet, small bucket, and TP holder w no TP
i had intended on taking a picture of the setup for those that dont know what indian toilets are like, right up until i actually started wiping, and then all powers of memory went down the drain wiht my crap



good thing i watched outsourced... i dunno if this was the "accepted" way of doing your business but after looking at the setup carefully i deemed it to be the most logical. i could be wrong.
oddly...never has a roll of Charmin matched the feeling of "clean" i felt with this more natural method
I hopped in an airport cab since they are required to charge by metered and wont get swindled
on the way i start writing this post and am just taking in the scenery along the way. it reminds me a lot of argentina.
not quite urban, and not slums, but large clusters of houses and storefronts every km or soin each of these clusters there are tons of kids and young people just walking around. no idea what they are doing
everyone says this cab ride is suppose to take around 1.5 hours, but its approx 30km away, but we are always traveling between 40 and 80 km/h. somewhere the math is going wrong. that annoys me as an engineer
(time to switch tense again cause this thing is getting written all over the place)
basically I was so tired and wanted to fall asleep in the car so bad getting to the hotel but was terrified if i did the driver would just drive around in circles and dump me some random place with no cash left. but its okay. i made it okay. i need some sleep.

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