Sasha
First there was Bangalore. Trying to book anything out of Gokarna was a challenge. Who knew that almost all trains were completely booked 3 weeks ahead of time? We found a cheap overnight bus to Bangalore, and a direct flight to Bangkok from there. We also gave ourselves enough time to go to the Thai visa services in Bangalore so we could have 2 months in Thailand instead of just the 30 days they give you on arrival.
At this point, our tolerance for Indian cities is minimal. They are loud, polluted, more expensive, and the traffic is enough to give you a heart attack from the stress. Oh, and rickshaw drivers are devilspawn. In order to give Bangalore a chance to redeem itself, we arranged for a couple of couchsurfing homestays.
Within the first 20 minutes on the overnight "sleeper" bus we realized that we had made a big mistake. No, the bus was not AC (which had been my assumption) nor did we do any actually sleeping while on the bus. It was like trying to sleep in a bouncy castle on wheels that was driven by the wicked witch of the west (thanks to a friend for giving that description.) The roads are hardly highways, and weave around the mountains, and the driver was intent on taking advantage of driving at night by pushing that bus as hard and fast as it would go, right up until hit hit a set of speed bumps where it would slam on the breaks, sending us rolling around our double bed bus compartment. Our 2 backpacks didn't quite fit on the luggage rack, so sometimes one would fly off, landing on our legs with a hard thud.
Once that experience ended, we hoofed it over to the main bus station. There were well over a hundred different buses in the station at any given point in time- three large concentric circles had platforms, that were labeled with suggestions for where each bus should stop. We waited for our bus number for 45 minutes before the lack of sleep and low tolerance for chaos caught up with us. Ra went to the info desk where the customer service representative assured him that the bus was running, and then told him to wait at the completely wrong platform. After some awkward silence, the man informed Ra that perhaps if he walked 20 meters away, there would be someone else who could help him. At that point Ra told the representative that there was no one over there and that clearly he was just trying to get rid of him! The rest of the people in line laughed at the fact that Ra called him on his shit. So, we hiked over to get a rickshaw, whose driver promptly ripped us off.
The next day involved more arguing with rickshaw drivers in an attempt to not get ripped off, and then onto the Thai visa service. Note: this is not an embassy, and it seems as though 10 other countries have also outsourced their visa service to the same company. In fact, our passports would have to travel to Chennai and back for us to get the visa.
"So, what do you do if the passport gets lost?" Ra asks the woman.
"That never happens." The woman behind the Thailand desk tells us. Yeah, uhuh.
Despite printing out our checklist of all of the necessary documents, we found ourselves being rejected from the Thailand desk 3 times before we had everthing we needed (copy of the passport, the passport, a plan ticket in to the country and proof of a plane ticket out of the country, two copies of the application, 2 photos. . . did I miss anything???) Until we had everything filed and paid for, and crossed our fingers that the passports would come back to us in 3 days.
At this point, we are exhausted, hungry beyond measure, and both of us with head colds from the sleeper bus.
After eating, we try to find a ride back to our homestay. The first driver quotes us a price more than double the proper amount. The second driver says he'd take us using the meter- plus an extra 40 rupees. Finally, a quite driver agrees to take us there on meter alone. The other drivers curse him for screwing up their racket, and we crawl into the back.
I turn around and say, "If we were anywhere else I'd say that those are some bumping speakers in the back of this rickshaw."
"Those are some bumping speakers." Ra says after inspecting the setup.
He taps the driver to ask him to play some music. The driver stops the rickshaw, gets out to grab the speaker face, and using his one good arm (the other hand is lame) he hooks it up, and hooks us up. The next thing we know, were are cruising through Bangalore with a thumping subwoofer beneath us. We are in our own private bubble of gangsta rap and daft punk, and the honking of India gets pushed back outside of our rickshaw. For the first time all day, we have smiles on our face.
That night we cook dinner for our hosts, and 3 of their friends. Vijay is a furniture designer, and a guitar player, his wife Nia is an interior designer turned stay at home mom. Their friends were also in creative fields. A couple days later, we were to visit Sam, one of the friends, at his photo studio. There we talked about India and creativity. We noticed a decided lack of imagination with the people we dealt with. I tend to use a lot of miming when trying to communicate with people and Indian people really didn't get it at all. When I'd ask them to make a dish a different way in a restaurant, for the most part they would be flabbergasted. Sam confirmed that creative thought just wasn't emphasized in India. When people are hungry, or worrying about where they are going to sleep, creativity just doesn't fit in. Even in upper middle class families, kids are pushed into law, engineering, and other such practical occupations.
Our last night in India, we get taken to a ritz-y bar in UB city. We sit in a clean lounge, with a good sound system, and sip on stupidly priced cocktails. But it feels like a bar that could be in any city in the west, and it is nice to take a break from India.
The next day, we go to the Bangalore Botanical Gardens, where all of the flowers are gated off from the general public. The gardens are quiet but the drive there and back is relentless in the way that Indian traffic can be. We gather our bags, walk to the bus stop- which has no signs, or any indication which bus might stop there, but we are told that eventually the bus for the airport might stop there. While waiting, a taxi- not a rickshaw!!! stops to ask us if we are going to the airport, and that if we are he will take us there for the same price as what we'd pay for the bus- which is a 200rupee discount from the standard taxi fare. Yes, haleluja. The airport is clean, orderly, though the wifi is not free, but we are leaving India, we breath the sighs of relief.
First there was Bangalore. Trying to book anything out of Gokarna was a challenge. Who knew that almost all trains were completely booked 3 weeks ahead of time? We found a cheap overnight bus to Bangalore, and a direct flight to Bangkok from there. We also gave ourselves enough time to go to the Thai visa services in Bangalore so we could have 2 months in Thailand instead of just the 30 days they give you on arrival.
At this point, our tolerance for Indian cities is minimal. They are loud, polluted, more expensive, and the traffic is enough to give you a heart attack from the stress. Oh, and rickshaw drivers are devilspawn. In order to give Bangalore a chance to redeem itself, we arranged for a couple of couchsurfing homestays.
Within the first 20 minutes on the overnight "sleeper" bus we realized that we had made a big mistake. No, the bus was not AC (which had been my assumption) nor did we do any actually sleeping while on the bus. It was like trying to sleep in a bouncy castle on wheels that was driven by the wicked witch of the west (thanks to a friend for giving that description.) The roads are hardly highways, and weave around the mountains, and the driver was intent on taking advantage of driving at night by pushing that bus as hard and fast as it would go, right up until hit hit a set of speed bumps where it would slam on the breaks, sending us rolling around our double bed bus compartment. Our 2 backpacks didn't quite fit on the luggage rack, so sometimes one would fly off, landing on our legs with a hard thud.
Once that experience ended, we hoofed it over to the main bus station. There were well over a hundred different buses in the station at any given point in time- three large concentric circles had platforms, that were labeled with suggestions for where each bus should stop. We waited for our bus number for 45 minutes before the lack of sleep and low tolerance for chaos caught up with us. Ra went to the info desk where the customer service representative assured him that the bus was running, and then told him to wait at the completely wrong platform. After some awkward silence, the man informed Ra that perhaps if he walked 20 meters away, there would be someone else who could help him. At that point Ra told the representative that there was no one over there and that clearly he was just trying to get rid of him! The rest of the people in line laughed at the fact that Ra called him on his shit. So, we hiked over to get a rickshaw, whose driver promptly ripped us off.
The next day involved more arguing with rickshaw drivers in an attempt to not get ripped off, and then onto the Thai visa service. Note: this is not an embassy, and it seems as though 10 other countries have also outsourced their visa service to the same company. In fact, our passports would have to travel to Chennai and back for us to get the visa.
"So, what do you do if the passport gets lost?" Ra asks the woman.
"That never happens." The woman behind the Thailand desk tells us. Yeah, uhuh.
Despite printing out our checklist of all of the necessary documents, we found ourselves being rejected from the Thailand desk 3 times before we had everthing we needed (copy of the passport, the passport, a plan ticket in to the country and proof of a plane ticket out of the country, two copies of the application, 2 photos. . . did I miss anything???) Until we had everything filed and paid for, and crossed our fingers that the passports would come back to us in 3 days.
At this point, we are exhausted, hungry beyond measure, and both of us with head colds from the sleeper bus.
After eating, we try to find a ride back to our homestay. The first driver quotes us a price more than double the proper amount. The second driver says he'd take us using the meter- plus an extra 40 rupees. Finally, a quite driver agrees to take us there on meter alone. The other drivers curse him for screwing up their racket, and we crawl into the back.
I turn around and say, "If we were anywhere else I'd say that those are some bumping speakers in the back of this rickshaw."
"Those are some bumping speakers." Ra says after inspecting the setup.
He taps the driver to ask him to play some music. The driver stops the rickshaw, gets out to grab the speaker face, and using his one good arm (the other hand is lame) he hooks it up, and hooks us up. The next thing we know, were are cruising through Bangalore with a thumping subwoofer beneath us. We are in our own private bubble of gangsta rap and daft punk, and the honking of India gets pushed back outside of our rickshaw. For the first time all day, we have smiles on our face.
That night we cook dinner for our hosts, and 3 of their friends. Vijay is a furniture designer, and a guitar player, his wife Nia is an interior designer turned stay at home mom. Their friends were also in creative fields. A couple days later, we were to visit Sam, one of the friends, at his photo studio. There we talked about India and creativity. We noticed a decided lack of imagination with the people we dealt with. I tend to use a lot of miming when trying to communicate with people and Indian people really didn't get it at all. When I'd ask them to make a dish a different way in a restaurant, for the most part they would be flabbergasted. Sam confirmed that creative thought just wasn't emphasized in India. When people are hungry, or worrying about where they are going to sleep, creativity just doesn't fit in. Even in upper middle class families, kids are pushed into law, engineering, and other such practical occupations.
Our last night in India, we get taken to a ritz-y bar in UB city. We sit in a clean lounge, with a good sound system, and sip on stupidly priced cocktails. But it feels like a bar that could be in any city in the west, and it is nice to take a break from India.
The next day, we go to the Bangalore Botanical Gardens, where all of the flowers are gated off from the general public. The gardens are quiet but the drive there and back is relentless in the way that Indian traffic can be. We gather our bags, walk to the bus stop- which has no signs, or any indication which bus might stop there, but we are told that eventually the bus for the airport might stop there. While waiting, a taxi- not a rickshaw!!! stops to ask us if we are going to the airport, and that if we are he will take us there for the same price as what we'd pay for the bus- which is a 200rupee discount from the standard taxi fare. Yes, haleluja. The airport is clean, orderly, though the wifi is not free, but we are leaving India, we breath the sighs of relief.
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