Blitz Visit of Bangalore

Last Saturday I took about half the day to to a quick visit of Bangalore and try to understand the city a little more. I definitely got a better idea of what was in store for me for the next couple weeks. My first stop was the Bangalore palace. It's kinda nice but it seems like they're commercializing it for weddings, so there is a lot of unauthentic additions.


At the Maharaja of Karnataka's Palace... Yes, it used to be alive!


This is the current King of Karnataka. It's just a province, they don't really have a king in India just a whole bunch of Maharajas (Means "Great King" in Hindi, I think), usually ne for each province. This guys is a fashion designer also, although I wasn't too impressed with his collection of Saris and Kurtas.


And yes, this is a Royal Stool, made of real elephant's foot. The highlight of my visit to the palace.


The guide told us that this was Bangalore's "Mona Lisa". If you look closely, you can see that from either angle, her torso faces you... I'm not too much of an art person but that's still pretty cool.

After the Palace, we visited a place called the Bull Temple. It's a Hindu Temple with a massive granite stone bull that is about 500 years old. The "priest" gave us a short visit, showing the proper manner to worship the Bull and then gave us Jasmin flowers and "Dotted" us on the forehead for health and good luck.

Bryony (From KPMG UK)and I in front of the BULL.

My favorite part was the travel in between sites. In India, people travel by auto rickshaw. They are small covered three-wheelers that sound like mopeds. Traffic in India is sort of an organized chaos. Rules seem more like suggestions, and apparently it is possible to fit 3 cars, a motorcycle, and a rickshaw on a two lane road. It's kind of scary at first but after driving for a week an not seeing accidents or many dented cars, I start to trust a little more.


Watch the road driver!


Pretty close...