We have bid farewell to Vaishakh, which is sad. He has been absolutely amazing and taken us to places that we would never have visited had we been travelling alone. He dropped us off at our hotel in Bengaluru this morning before he headed off for another job. I suspect we may still be calling on him for advice during the rest of our trip! Poor man!!

We’re staying at the Radisson again, we were here just over a week ago. although we’re only sleeping one night, I also booked for last night as we were arriving early so it meant we could check in rest, shower etc rather than having to wait until 2pm. I only booked a standard room, but they must like us as they have bumped us up to the corner suite on the top floor again with panoramic views of the lake, and the circular bath (be warned, I might actually use it this time).

One thing we haven’t has so far this trip is cake, and we were starting to crave it (just a little bit). We’ve seen some lovely cakes but all had egg, butter, cream etc in then, so no good for the vegan traveller. However, fear not – I am pretty good at sniffing out vegan cake. During my research into vegan eateries, I found a place in Bengaluru called the Digital Chef. it’s a vegan pizza place and vegan patisserie. I know, and odd combination, but this is Indias Silicon Valley, so if your going to find and Indian hipster vegan, it’s likely to be here.

It’s based quite a way out from where we are staying, but fortunately they do deliveries. Unfortunately they are closed on Wednesdays (today). Fear not a hatched a cunning plan. Yesterday in Mysuru, while we were in the back of a tuk tuk, actually, I managed to place an order for a raspberry and mango cake to be delivered yesterday to our hotel. I had to do it via an app called Swiggy, it’s a sort of Indian Uber Eats. I never use any of those back in the UK, well I tell a lie, I did once to order three Pizzas for a Eurovision party. I didn’t get on with it, we ended up with 12 pizzas being delivered! 

Thankfully I had better luck this time, the order went through and I was able to track our cake being made, dispatched and delivered to the hotel. I had emailed the hotel to make them aware of the delivery yesterday and asked them to keep it for us until we arrived today. We’d just checked in when a member of the hotel staff came up with the cake in a box in a paper bag saying ‘some cake for you sir’. Mike was just about to say ‘no thank you, we’re vegan we can’t eat the cake’, when I took the back from her quickly and said thank you very much and headed for the lift. Mike looked slightly perplexed.

Up in our suite I revealed the surprise – a whole vegan cake all to ourselves. we popped the kettle on and sat down to enjoy our first cake in India with a nice cup of green tea. I feel very pleased that my cake plan has worked out, and even more amazing that a whole vegan cake delivered to our hotel cost the equivalent of just £7. I would probably get two slices of vegan cake for that price on my local high street. Thankfully for our waistlines, they only deliver in Bengaluru, so we shall enjoy it while it lasts (which won’t be long) before our cake famine resumes.