2024 Nepal – Bangalore
21st January 2024
In the past, we flew back through New Delhi or Mumbai but as we wanted a change we decided on Bangalore. We knew nothing about the city other than it was the “Silicon Valley of India.” For the first time, I booked a taxi through booking.com and was impressed at how smoothly the process went and how well-informed they kept us, including where we would meet the driver and even his name and phone number. At arrivals, there were dozens of drivers waiting with boards with names on but none of them were ours. I phoned the driver which turned out to be the company that employed him. After going away and making enquiries the company phoned me back ten minutes later saying there was no record of any booking in my name. I told them to forget it and we made our way to the Uber pickup area. It was a ten-minute walk and just as we were approaching the Uber stand, we saw a man leaning against the wall with a board with our name on it. It was literally in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t believe it but of course, we were tired and just wanted to get to the hotel so we followed him. There was no way of finding out what had happened because he didn’t speak a word of English. I contacted booking.com later and must say was impressed at the way they handled the complaint by giving me a full refund and 10% off our next taxi booking.
We were staying at the St Marks Hotel in the centre of town and were very happy with it. It had one of the best showers ever with a giant head at the top and a handheld one that slid up and down the rail as normal. I had noticed that these were becoming more common in hotels and I liked them so much that I decided to get one when I got home. We were tired after the journey so were tempted to order room service but I saw there was a sushi restaurant just around the corner and what a good decision it was to go there. It was a long time since we had had good sushi and despite being twice the price of what we normally paid for dinner in India, it was still very cheap.
Next morning our first stop was Commercial Street where there was a big open market. We found a tuk-tuk driver who quoted us a surprisingly low price. We were halfway there when our driver stopped and another man appeared who was introduced to us as our driver’s brother. The reason given for the change was that his brother spoke English. We didn’t think much about it and our new driver was friendly enough until he told us he wanted to stop at a special “tax-free” shop. We firmly said no but he insisted, saying all we had to do was go in and out and then he would get some money from the shop owners. I said no even more firmly and that we were not interested but he stopped at the shop anyway and pointed to some steps that we had to go down. I gave him the fare and we just walked off. It was quite an unpleasant experience and the reason why we were using Uber more than we would have liked. It wasn’t until later that it dawned on me that far from being brothers, they could have been grandfather and grandson.
It turned out there wasn’t much in Commercial Street anyway so we went to a very fancy shopping mall called UB City. 
I was looking for a new rucksack and didn’t mind splashing out on one so when I saw a shop offering 40% off everything, it looked promising until I found out that the one I wanted cost £400, so the original price was £560. How on earth can anyone pay so much for such a simple item no matter how good the quality it is? As a temporary measure I was using a rucksack that Federika bought in Mumbai for £10 and it was perfectly adequate. Federika never liked it because it had too many compartments (is that possible?) so she was happy for me to keep it.
Some of the buildings in Bangalore were extraordinary. Just down the road from our hotel was a building called Kingfisher Towers which had 34 floors and a two-storey mansion on the top. Each floor was a single apartment and each floor had 280 square metres. 
After spending so much time having to share walking space with cars and scooters, it was good to get back to pavements again although they also had drawbacks. A lot of the pavements were large gullies for rainwater with stone slabs laid across the top. It didn’t look great but was perfectly adequate until one of the slabs broke. It was quite common to be walking along only to find a big hole in front of you. 
There were areas with normal paving slabs but they were invariably broken so it was rare to walk any distance without something tripping you up. There were also a lot of cars and other obstacles on the pavements so a lot of the time we had to walk in the road. In the book I was reading, there was a passage which said “The great thing about India was the freedom. You can drive down the road on a scooter, without a helmet while smoking a spliff and no one is going to bother you.” That freedom seemed to extend to public facilities with the attitude “These are the pavements we have; you can take them or leave them.” Far from criticising this, I wonder if other countries might consider adopting the same policy. “We don’t have enough money to do everything you want us to do, so be careful where you walk so we can spend the money on something more important. This theory does fall down when the “Something more important” turns out to be a new filtration system for a councillor’s swimming pool.
On our second morning, we went to the Museum of Art and Photography. I usually get bored in art galleries but I quite enjoyed this one. There were some good photos and I was having fun thinking of video captions for some of the dafter exhibits, like “Uncle Harry has hairy legs,” 
or the woman who introduced her two sisters who were born with their heads stuck on back to front. 
There was also a very good 3D video experience where ancient crowd scenes were brought to life. I liked the mosaics of an artist called Nek Chand who owned a sculpture garden in Chandigarh. We had intended to go there but went to Nepal instead so we were happy to see some of his work in Bangalore. 
After that, we went to Cubbon Park which was a huge park built over 100 years ago by the British. It was a lovely warm day with the birds singing and lots of young lovers lying on the grass staring deeply into each other’s mobile phones. How romantic. It was a well-maintained park which was why it was surprising that there were no signs saying what anything was. There was one magnificent tree with nothing but a little wooden plaque with a number nailed to it. I made a note of the number to look for it on the internet but there was nothing. It must have been a state secret. 
One big problem in Bangalore was crossing the road. Some places had six lanes and although there were traffic lights, scooters completely ignored the lights and didn’t even slow down so it was really scary at times. There were some zebra crossings on the smaller roads but they were ignored by everyone.
Wednesday 24th January
We planned to complete our journey home all in one day which seemed a good idea at the time but after waking at 2.45 am we weren’t so sure. Everything went smoothly and we got through check-in and security in no time. The airport in Bangalore was new and quite magnificent. There was a lot of greenery and what looked like a little jungle stream running through the middle.
It was an 11-hour flight which wasn’t helped by the eight-hour gap between breakfast and lunch, especially as the breakfast was inedible. Halfway through the flight I was ravenous so I went hunting but all I was offered was a small selection of biscuits. We arrived at Heathrow half an hour late but there would still have been plenty of time to take a train to Terminal 2 for our flight to Zagreb had there been any sign of our luggage. The door next to the conveyor belt kept opening with baggage handlers walking out but no one was going in. There were rumours that they were changing shifts but I would have assumed management would make sure the new shift was in place before letting the old one leave. I was concerned that it might have been a strike but with great relief the conveyor belt started up although the luggage came through very slowly, as if there was a problem with the system. Then there was a mad dash to the train and endless moving walkways to get to Terminal 2. We were very short of time but when we got to the check-in we were told our Croatia Airlines flight was running an hour late. That was good good news. The bad news was that we wouldn’t make our connecting flight in Zagreb. By this time, we were both shattered and it was while we were sitting in a café having something to eat that I realised I had forgotten my carry-on suitcase. I only ever travel with a rucksack in the cabin so I was not used to a suitcase as well. I knew I had left it at security and was sure it would have been blown up as a suspicious package but to my great relief, a helpful young lady went into an office and brought my case out. This was not what I would call a stress-free journey.
On the plane, there was a group of us at the back who had to make a connection and the air hostess told us not to worry as there would be someone waiting for us in Zagreb to guide us through the transfer. In Zagreb, there was no one waiting so we had to find our own way to the departure gate but passport control was closed and the whole place deserted. It looked like we were sure to miss our flight but some of the other passengers started kicking up a fuss until finally, a customs officer strolled up to his box like he had all the time in the world and started letting us through. More dashing to the gate and fortunately the plane was still there which didn’t surprise me as Croatia Airlines was nearly always late. At Dubrovnik airport, our luggage didn’t arrive which was also no surprise as Croatian Airlines didn’t seem to place much importance on people’s luggage. Federika and I had both travelled extensively throughout our lives and neither of us had ever had trouble with luggage except with Croatia Airlines and it had happened three times in as many years. At least this time they delivered the luggage to our house the next day but when Federika went to England in December it took them three days to deliver it.
So, there we have the end of a very long journey which we vowed we would never do again. Next time we would stop over in places to break it up. At the end of each holiday, I usually go through a strange process of looking forward to going home but walking through arrivals and getting an irresistible urge to book a flight to somewhere else. This time I had no such urge and for a while thought maybe the days of our long-haul flights might be over. That lasted until the next morning when we started talking about next year’s holiday.
Now we come to the end of our Indian adventure 2024 and it is time for me to say “alavida” until next time.
2024 Nepal and India
