First Weekend in Bangalore

So it is mid-day Sunday of my first weekend in Bangalore. Given the chaos that will erupt tomorrow morning at work, I suspect this is the best time to write a post on how things have been going.

Saturday was a Bandh (Strike) in Bangalore. For most folks this was probably very inconvenient, but from my perspective, all I saw were empty streets and zero traffic. Getting anywhere was super easy. Bangalore is a small city that feels big because of the crazy traffic situation. Traffic btw is the biggest topic of conversation in Bangalore. Discussions on traffic pervade everything. Schedules are arranged around traffic patterns and life here can be heaven or hell depending on how well you can deal with the traffic. Some part of this situation is a travesty because Bangalore started off as an urban heaven, a small, quaint, green city full of beautiful lakes and parks. For example, check out the link below to see what is going on with the lakes here.

Wikipedia link to Lakes in Bangalore

Anyways, back to the weekend. It couldn’t have been more full given that I basically just landed here a few days ago. Because of the aforementioned strike, Niket and I decided to walk around our area and explore it a bit. There is an area called Adarsh Palm Retreat nearby which feels like you stepped into Los Altos for a bit. The roads were excellent, the sidewalks nice and flowers all around. I can see running here if I ended up living somewhere around. It looked something like this.

Later in the day, went to a place called Via Milano in Koramangala on Saturday for some Italian. It had posters all over that advertised its nominations for being the best italian food around. It was reasonable but considering what we get back in California, very mediocre. Maybe I caught them on a bad day. Worse was the wine menu, or the lack of any real options on it. But the company was good and views nice, so the evening worked out. On the way back, the chaos started. I got a message from a distant friend who invited me to a party in a place called Hummingbird where I ran into some other folks I knew from school days! The place was positively buzzing! It had a very seafront, rooftop, casual sports bar meets dive bar kind of feel to it. The crowd was cool and the company fun. By the time I got home, it was seriously late into the night. (random tripadvisor pic of the place below)

And then in a few hours, I was out again playing Badminton (Of course. I am in Asia now) with some colleagues. There are at least two other things I turned down for the rest of the day because I am starting to fade away with this amount of weekend activity.

Bottom line: There is tons to do here. People are super friendly and will integrate you in quickly. Key is to have an open mind. Ignore the frustrations and focus on enjoying the company of some of the friendliest people you will ever run into.

Onwards to some real work now (read House hunting).