In The Beginning.....
India; day 1(or perhaps 2? Do you include the flight in this?)

Things did not begin well

Firstly, there was getting to the airport in Wellington and realizing that I had forgotten my sleeping bag. This led inevitably on to Giffy asking, “Do you have your ticket and passport”, to which I predictably answered, “…. no”. By the time the mad rush to get my stuff to me before I boarded the plan to Auckland; I had realized that I had also forgotten my digital camera.

Thus far, things did not bode well.

I had a nice evening in Auckland with C+D, where they fed me ridiculously sized pizza and we caught a movie (Star Wars). Having been more then well looked after by them, we made our way to the airport, basically hiccup free. Me and my traveling companion for India, Dr B, boarded the plane and sat in our remarkably spacious exit row seats (thanks for the advice C!). The whole trip took around 15 hours including a 2 hour stop over in Kuala Lumpur Airport and was remarkable pain free, although I didn’t really sleep at all, which was ok since we got into India at around bed time.

Once disembarking, I went over to one of the money changers to get some local currency, of which I had none on the suggestion of one of the doctors at Hutt hospital who is from the south of India. This was the first time my Visa didn’t work. We wandered though customs and I tried my luck with an ATM. Visa failure number 2 (although I think it actually was a MasterCard only ATM). Luckily, the far more prepared then I Dr B, had cash and paid for the taxi to our hotel. After a fun, noisy and sometimes terrifying ride, we rolled up to the Airlines Hotel, which had been heartily endorsed by the Lonely Planet Guide, which of course meant that the prices had doubled since last year. I tried once more in vain to use my Visa to pay for our rooms, which was silly I admit because of the fees on such a transaction would probably have been more then the rooms themselves, but I wanted to see if my card really wasn’t working. Failure number 3. So in the end Dr B paid for the rooms as well. Feeling sorry for myself and making plans to visit a bank tomorrow in the hopes of working this all out, we retired to our room. Since I was stressed out from my lack of money + sleep and Dr B was feeling a bit funny after her drug induced sleep on the plane over, we didn’t have very much nice to say about the room which to us appeared filthy and disgusting. So complaining bitterly, we denounced the Lonely Planet Guide as a font of lies and deceit, made plans to find a nice place tomorrow and went to sleep.

I the light of morning when the haze of lack of sleep had evaporated, we came to realize that our hotel actually wasn’t that bad really. We realized this by the following points:

1) they had readily accepted us even though we turned up well after midnight
2) we had our own bathroom with running cold + hot water (even if the toilet didn’t flush, but Thailand had taught me how to deal with that)
3) we had a sit down toilet which was a nice surprise
4) we had two bed that were firm but not too hard
5) there was a notable lack of bugs
6) the complex had a little dairy and a place to sit down and eat
7) the complex was situated back from the road and surrounded by trees
8) we had yet to have anyone try to steal things from us

With all that in mind we decided we quite liked our hotel and as it turned out the staff were pretty nice, giving us free maps and telling us where the things we wanted to see were.

We had breakfast at the hotel cafeteria, which was interesting since neither Dr B nor I had any idea of anything on the menu. At the waiters suggestion we had dosa, which turned out to be this big pancake like bread with lite curries. I was really good.

Then we set out to have an adventure and look for a bank for me. I was really relieved when I finally found an ATM that said Visa on it and, !success!, I was able to get money out. Then, with my new found riches, we wandered up and down the main street of Bangalore and I must say it was pretty interesting. We’ve had a nice walk in a park and we’re planning, after lunch when the weathers cooled down a bit to good have a look at some palaces and temples and stuff.

I’m amazed at how much I’ve typed especially because after getting more then half way through this thing I had to start again cause the power went off briefly. Just quickly though, I thought I might share with you some of my observations thus far:

People in India stare at long haired white freaks like myself

People in India shake their heads from side-to-side to indicate acknowledgement of your questions. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t really mean yes or no

Every driver in Bangalore uses his horn continuously. It was weird with our taxi driver since he seemed to be using his horn even when there wasn’t any other cars on the road. Maybe, since he was driving so fast, he thought he should let people know he was coming.

Crossing roads in India is a harrowing experience, especially since everyone’s honking and you’re never sure what at.

The weather isn’t as hot as I thought it would be but we’re going to go and hide inside until 2pm just in case.

I’ve spent to long in this internet place. I’m going to have a cold shower before we set off again for the afternoon.

I miss my Giffy.

Bye all,

Erik