Baubles, Bangalore, and Beads

While it is the last post for our trip, we actually started in Bangalore. We have been much happier with the smaller B&B-type hotels than with the larger hotels in both Bangalore and Mysore as we had in Pondicherry. The Royal Orchid in Mysore was a traditional hotel that started its life as a princess' villa but not the same scale of Sheratons or Novotel. In Bangalore, we stayed at the Villa Pottipaty. As you can imagine, the immediate image that comes to mind, hmmmmmmm? Well, far from it! The villa was in a busy section of the city, but had all the charm and quiet of a more secluded venue. The Villa is owned by the same entrepreneurs as own the Hotel L' Orient in Pondicherry. It is an old home of a Brahmin family that is charming.
The room we selected was small, but comfortable. The garden court was outside where the stables had been. We had the time to read the paper and be served lunch. Oh, so colonial.

On our tour, we stopped at the new government buildings designed to look like the Indo-European architecture of the Raj, go figure. But the old high court house building below is the REAL colonial building and it was THE happenin' place while we were there because a group of 16 dissident legislators who were recently elected but then kicked out because they were going to vote 'no confidence' for the chief minister, were having their appeal heard. So the news trucks were all over the streets awaiting a verdict.

. Then we traveled to the botanical gardens which was patterned after the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. Once again, the old "I love you, I hate you" comes out as Bangaloreis come out to enjoy a stroll through the park.

We went to the Big Bull Temple, no we didn't transport back to Washington, DC, this was a real big bull, Nandi, Shiva's vehicle. Unfortunately, Nandi has two horns, so you can imagine what it's like when Shiva is stuck in Bangalore rush hour traffic. Oh, the humanity. Of course, there's a Shiva temple right next door to the Big Bull temple.

We went to dinner at a happening place, the Halli Mane but I failed to take a picture, much to Deb's disappointment. But the street vendors and stores were all getting ready for Bangalore's celebration of Durgha Puja or Desara or oh, skip it.


The next morning we had a leisurely breakfast in the courtyard before Mahaboob picked us up for our trip to Mysore.
If you follow the next two posts down, you'll have our entire trip which was really delightful. I'll tell you about my guest lecture gig at the University of Hyderabad in my next posting.