Mysore to Bangalore

Cocoon Market

Go Figure

Jan. 17, 2013- Winding Down

The banquet last night was poolside at our hotel. We were still full from lunch but managed to at least taste all the offerings. Once on the bus today Charles gave us a blow by blow re-cap of the trip including highlights of who participated in side trips & individual incidents being sure to mention each by name. He spoke from notes but it was an amazing recall of the trip. He spoke of how moving it was to participate in Shabbat with us & privately told David he changed his life & will always be remembered. I'm a bit sad that we'll be leaving the group today.

Goa goers were dropped off at the hotel in Bangalore along with our luggage. The rest joined us for lunch then re-boarded the bus for the airport. Charles returned to Chennai & will start a new tour with a French group of forty in three days. Yes, he speaks French too.

We liked Charles so much that we asked him if he did private tours of the South. He said he did & could also set up a small tour in the North. He knows his schedule with OAT three months ahead of time for those who want to travel with OAT & be sure to get him.  We have his contact information if you are interested. We'd recommend seeing the North first, though.

There has been a nasty incident in Pakistan by Al Qaida influenced soldiers. Two Indian soldiers were shot & their bodies were returned to their families without their heads. The Indian government has canceled visas for senior citizens coming to India to visit family. Pakistan wanted a third party negotiation which India refused. Hopefully it won't shatter the peace agreement.

We did a drive through of the three square mile Fort Srirangantha, built in 1762 & the site of a series of freedom fights & last stand of the only sultan (Tipfu) who opposed the British.  General Cornwallis was in the dog house at home after losing the American Revolutionary War. He was told his only path to redemption was to settle the score in India. Sultan Topfu gave him a run for his money winning three battles. During the fourth the sultan sent for help to the French. His letter was intercepted & help never came. In addition traitors within opened the water gate to the fort thus admitting the enemy & creating a success for Cornwallis. If Nixon had been a more astute student of history he might have avoided his own debacle & downfall.

Not to miss an experience we stopped at a sugar cane factory. Avoiding cow patties we tiptoed through piles of drying cane husks in preparation for their use as fuel. The cane is cultivated & processed by migrant workers from the North. The cane juice is squeezed then boiled for three hours. The syrup is mixed with calcium (to strengthen teeth & counteract the downside of eating sugar?) then poured into buckets to set. Some of us tasted the finished product & David made the same puckered face of distaste he did when he tasted grappa. This sugar is used in coffee, tea & in candy making a cheaper substitute for white sugar.

Our pit stop was a vast improvement over the one going the other way. Charles really did take us to the KFC but recommended the place next door. Cafe Coffee Day was as American as it can get here. The Muzak was  playing "Call Me Maybe", there was no Sanskrit to be found anywhere, toilets were Western, clean & HAD TOILET PAPER on rolls, there were air hand driers in the bathroom, most of the tabletops had been wiped, & the coffee was superb. But KFC called. We always like to at least look at local menus of American chains & this one delivered. They had curry crisp chicken. mango poppers, & a poster promising: drip, kiss, lick, munch, drool, slurp. Unfortunately, my expectations of Kama Sutra-esque maneuvers were disappointed when I realized they were promoting slushies.

When our heads said, "Been there done that," we were once again proved wrong. The stop at the cocoon market was unlike anything we'd ever seen in the processing of silk. It's regulated  by the government & sold by weight at today's price of $60/kilo. Unhatched cocoons are brought to the market & must be sold before hatching or else the value of the silk diminishes greatly. The fuzzy cocoons are the size of small bird eggs & vary in color from pale greenish-yellow to pure white. The white ones are the most valued & are top grade Chinese hybrids. Yellow-green cocoons are Indian & less

 pure. I picked one up & could feel the larva rattling around inside kind of like the old Mexican jumping beans. When people buy cocoons they dip them in hot water to kill the larvae & unroll the silk thread. Some then resell it as-is or remove the sticky gum & dye the silk. David once again was delayed getting through the crowd by two men who insisted he take their photo. I emerged with a slim thread of silk clinging to the back of my shirt. Better than bird shit.

I asked about seeing a call center in Bangalore but Charles said they're two hours out of town. I thought it would be fun answering the phone & saying, "Hi, my name’s Toby & I'm in Bangalore. What’s yer problem?"

David figured out the real purpose of driver's assistants other than helping tourists on & off the bus. Even public transportation has them. They're spotters for the blind side of the bus. Traffic is so congested & spacing so close the driver needs help judging the far side of the vehicle. He also noticed an instance of a time warp better than my IPad versus bull cart transport. It was a bull cart driver talking on his cell phone.

Gearing Up

Our hotel in Bangalore is supposed to be a 5-star but falls short by about two stars. It's not bad, just aged. The prices in the wet bar are high with $6 for a 750 ml. bottle of Pellegrino.

Across from our hotel is a major shopping mall with recognizable stores. The top floor was the next best thing to a Whole Foods complete with a separate store within a store for non-vegetarian items, eg. meat & fish. We did a fast walk-thru then went in search of what we thought Charles said was the city center. We asked along the way but no one seemed to know what we were talking about. We varied asking for "city center" with "downtown," but no luck. A half hour later we came upon the Central Mall. That must have been what he meant. We ultimately came to an even larger modern mall, did a walk-about, & headed back. The traffic & condition of the sidewalks were too threatening to attempt a return trip in the dark. We had to cross the street twice & even with crosswalks & traffic signals it was a game of chicken. You see, continuous turn lanes for cars don't give way for pedestrians. By the time we got back to the hotel we were coughing from the pollution.

We took our lives into our hands & went to dinner across the street at the mall with Henry & Celeste. We'd found what turned out to be an excellent Korean restaurant. We had bi bim bop & bulgogi, a welcome change from Indian food.

I haven't mentioned the heat in the last few days because the weather here is milder. That changes in Goa & Mumbai. Back to the 80's then home to the 30's.

And then there were seven in our group leaving for Goa tomorrow:Dan & Judy from Wisconsin, Nam, the waiter from NYC, & Henry & Celeste from New Jersey. We'll meet our new "keeper" there.

Toby