India was a trip, literally and figuratively. It's a wonderful crush of humanity and fauna and vehicles. On the streets, people and livestock and automobiles commingle in a sort of structured chaos. It's madness, but it's delightful madness.
[Scene from a random Bangalore street.]
The flights there were long and uneventful. I watched Moneyball and The Godfather Part II on the plane -- two classics I had somehow never seen before. I enjoyed both quite a bit. We had a longish layover in Frankfurt, Germany, so we booked a hotel room in the airport, which allowed us to take showers and lay down for a bit. It was a nice respite, even though we had to juggle four people on a single twin bed. It was kinda pricey, so we only got one room, instead of two, but then they way undercharged us, for some reason, and it ended up only costing about $30, so that worked out nicely.
We left DC Thursday evening December 14, and right around midnight Saturday the 16th, we arrived in Bangalore. The official name is Bengaluru, but it seems like everybody who lives there calls it Bangalore. It's a huge tech hub -- the "Silicon Valley of India" -- so over the past few decades they've seen a lot of immigration from other countries and other parts of India. As a result, the traditional local language, Kannada, is becoming less prominent, in favor of Hindi and English, which are more widely spoken. There's been a push by the local government to retain the language -- for example, all business signage must contain a Kannada translation -- but I don't know if it's really working. It's hard to mandate such a thing. People are gonna talk how they're gonna talk.
For the first few nights, we stayed at a hotel across the street from S's cousin's apartment. It was a fine hotel -- pretty bare-bones, but inexpensive and a buffet breakfast was included. They also had good internet, a theme of our trip (the beauty of staying in a tech hub), so I was able to keep tabs on the NFL games being played in the middle of the night, while I was jet-lagged. I followed in real-time as Christian McCaffrey scored 46.70 points and led me to victory in the first round of my fantasy football playoffs.
The main problem with staying in the hotel is that we had to cross the street to get to S's cousin's place. That might not sound like a big deal, but there are basically no crosswalks and very few stoplights anywhere in Bangalore (or anywhere else I've been in India). Getting from one side of a major street to the other is like playing a real-life version of Frogger. When it was just me, it was no big deal -- I'm still spry enough to handle it -- but it was a bit nerve-wracking to shepherd the kids across. In general, it's really jarring at first to have vehicles drive so close to you as a pedestrian. But that's just how it is there, and you kinda get used to it. It reminds me of working construction on scaffolding. At first, it's pretty scary to be up so high, and then eventually you don't even really think about it.
We only stayed in the hotel two nights before moving to the guest units in S's cousin's complex. That was very nice, even though the rooms were essentially dorm rooms. We were completely doted on by everybody staying with S's cousin. In total there were seven people living in about an 800 sq. ft. apartment -- S's cousin and her husband, their 16-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son, and S's parents and her aunt. Every time we would go over there, we were offered food and coffee and a place to sit and relax. It was great. Also, S's cousin's son is about Lil' S2's age and really into sports, so they hit it off pretty well, even if Lil' S2 was frustrated nobody in the country cares about American football, his is newest obsession.*
*S blames this on me, but I'm like, I have two kids, one of them loves football and one of them doesn't, so... yeah. Plus, if I actually had that much influence on Lil' S2, he would be a Seahawks fan. But he's not. Much to my chagrin, he's a Cowboys fan. Before we left, we got him a Micah Parsons jersey as an early Christmas gift, and he's worn it just about everyday since.
Another good thing about staying in S's cousin's complex is that we had access to a gym. Being on such a weird sleep schedule, I was able to hit the treadmill at 6:00 am, while most everybody else was in bed. It was nice. Although, I was struggling to maintain any sort of decent pace. I had the treadmill set on 10 km/hr, which converts to about a 10-minute mile, well below my usual clip, and I couldn't keep up. I had to slow it down to a glorified walk. At first I thought it was just the travel, but that didn't make sense -- why would that make me lose all my cardio? I surmised that Bangalore must be at a higher altitude (it felt like the time I went for a hike in Boulder, Colorado), and sure enough, it's located on the Mysore Plateau over 3,000 feet above sea level. It all makes sense now.
The big excursion for the first leg of our trip was going to an entertainment complex called Loco Bear. They had trampolines and video games and bowling and stuff like that. We met like five of S's cousins* there, and they brought their spouses and kids, so we had a huge group. Go-carting was the main event. It was really fun, although it set a bad tone for the trip for Lil' S2, because he was too short to go, even though he was clearly taller than the line on the sign. For some reason, they still wouldn't let him go. He was really upset about it, and it started a trend where he would say everything we were doing "sucks." This bothered S quite a bit -- I think it hurt her feelings -- but I tried to put things into perspective. Imagine you're an 8-year-old, and your parents tell you that Christmas as you know it is canceled for year, and instead you have to travel to the other side of the globe to go somewhere you never signed off on in the first place. That's a tough ask.
*I'm using this term loosely. I think they were actually second-cousins or maybe cousins-once-removed. I'm not sure. It's difficult to keep your own family tree straight, let alone somebody else's.
One good thing that came about from Lil' S2 being such a wet blanket, however, is that it compelled Lil' S1 to go the other direction. Sensing the opportunity get one over on his brother, he would say everything we did that Lil' S2 didn't like was great. "Wasn't that just so much fun?" he would say in obvious earshot of his brother. It was sibling rivalry nonsense, but at least it was sibling rivalry nonsense that made things a little easier and more pleasant for S and me.
A few other activities we did while in Bangalore: saw Wonka, went shopping, went out to eat a bunch.
Somehow one day it ended up being just me, Lil' S1, and my father-in-law together, so we went to see Wonka. Buying the tickets turned out to be an adventure. We went to the box office at the theater, but we still had to buy the tickets using a mobile phone. I couldn't use my phone because you had to have an Indian number, so we had to use my father-in-law's Indian mobile phone. The problem with that is that he doesn't know how anything works on it, and he didn't even know what his number is. He had a ten-minute back-and-forth with the guy at the counter, trying to figure out how we could purchase the tickets. They finally got it settled, whereby the counter guy bought the tickets, my father-in-law gave him cash, and then the counter guy took a picture with my father-in-law's phone of his screen showing the sale. We then showed that picture to the person checking tickets to get into the theater. It was quite the ordeal, but we made it in.
The movie was pretty good. It was in "4-D," so the seats would shake and jostle during certain moments and fog and bubbles would come out in front of the screen. I would have preferred the usual 2-D experience, to be honest. I found the moving seat to just be annoying. Lil' S1 said he liked it though. It didn't hurt that he got a huge -- I mean truly massive -- piece of chocolate cake as his "movie snack." I was actually kinda trying to limit his junk food intake (this trip was bad for that), but that's impossible when a grandparent is around. They always cave.
Shopping in India is always tough for me because I'm way bigger than the average dude there. I mean, I'm bigger than the average dude here, and that sometimes makes finding my sizes challenging. But in India, it's way worse. Not too many people are above six feet and those that are typically aren't as buff-fat as me. A lot of stores don't carry XL size, and for certain brands even XL isn't big enough. All I wanted was a zip-up sweatshirt with zipper pockets for the flight home. (The one I wore on the way there has a hole in the pocket, as I discovered by losing Lil' S2's headphones. Thankfully, we found them.) I finally found one, but I had to go to like ten different stores. I wasn't being picky about style or color either;* I was just trying to find something big enough. I also got a few kurtas and a pair of those Indian drawstring pants, for occasions that call for such garb here in the States -- Diwali parties and whatnot.
*Well, that's not entirely true. I found something else that fit, but it was some race car brand, and it looked too 1970s European for my tastes.
The best part about being in Bangalore is that we had S's cousin and her husband (such nice people) to show us around and take us to various establishments. Dinner was rough because they eat later there (7:00pm is an early dinner), and we were fading early, but we rallied and went to a few great restaurants. My favorite place was a microbrewery with an excellent hefeweizen. I had three of them, which, come to think of it, was the only alcohol I had the entire time we were in India. We also got some chicken wings, which were delectable but absolutely lit my mouth on fire. Beer, spicy foods, India -- you might think my tummy was hurting later that night, but it wasn't. Amazingly and thankfully, I had no major gastrointestinal issues the entire trip.
I don't remember the name of the microbrewery, which is a shame, because they have such great names in India. The English is often a little off to the American ear, which makes them delightful. Here are a few good ones I made note of: Pothead, Meat & Eat, Rolls Rice Cafe, The Frozen Bottle, Time Zone, and my personal favorite, Munch Box. I didn't see that one this trip, but it's so funny, I still remember it from 13 years ago.
After six nights in Bangalore, we set out to Mysore. I'll get to that in Part II.
Until next time...
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