Thursday 30 January

Bengaluru

Our second day exploring Bengaluru . We had the suite on the seventh floor of the the Radisson – just like last time. It’s a lovely room – with a coffee machine and an amazing view (and remote control curtains!), so we had coffee and watched the sun come up. The gym is on the same floor as our room and Matthew went over there to do his RED run (we don’t know how he’ll get to run tomorrow as we’re going to be on trains heading north for a lot of the time with a break of a few hours in Hampi). 

The Radisson in Bengaluru is opposite Lake Ulsoor and I could see from our window that there was a path alongside the lake. I thought that running by the lake would be nice and tried to persuade Matthew to join me, but he wasn’t having it (he says that he doesn’t really like running with me – which is a bit sad). I’m still recovering from a sprained foot and it aches from time to time but last time I ran was on the beach in Kerala and I managed 3 miles on one day then 4 miles the next – in the heat and on the sand); it’s much cooler here in Bangaluru and it’d be flat, so I wanted to try for 10k/6 miles. Finding my way onto the path was tricky but once I was beside the water it was a wonderful run. Quite a few others were out running – and it’s always nice to wave, nod, smile, give a thumbs-up as we pass each other. There were also lots of speed walkers and people doing yoga. It was a shame that the path didn’t go all the way around the lake, though- I had to run back and forth around half of it a few times to get the miles in – 6.7 miles to be exact.

I could see our hotel room from across the lake.

After breakfast we lazed about a bit, read up on Hampi and decided what to do with our day in Bengaluru. Matthew wanted to try a vegan cafe that he’d found out about, I wanted to get a haircut and beard shave, and Matthew wanted to explore the city centre a bit.

I found a barber nearby and Matthew decided to have a trip too. It’s very nice feeling less like a shaggy old grey dog! Then we took the metro to Indiranagar from where it was a short walk to Copper + Cloves … a wonderful vegan cafe in a lovely old house with a pretty garden.

It was so nice to have a choice from an entirely vegan menu!

After lunch we headed to Cubbon/Sri Chamarajendra Park in the centre of the city – it’s huge! The park was originally laid out in 1870 and has been extended so that it now covers 1.2km ².

There are formal gardens, rocky outcrops, fountains, wooded areas, naturalistic planting, a bandstand, a fern house and shrines. The central library is in the park as is the archeological museum.

Nearby were the Courthouse and the magnificent legislative assembly of Karnatika building (known as the Vidhana Soudha) that was completed in 1956.

We’ve some long train journeys coming up, so we needed to get some food supplies in and collect our bags from the hotel. We took the metro to the train station, but got off a stop too early! Thankfully we had plenty of time and took the next Metro. My token wouldn’t let me out at the railway station because I’d not paid enough – it took a bit of explaining that Google had told us to go to the previous stop for the railway station.

While we sat on the platform at Bengaluru, I was wondering where my jacket was. I asked Matthew if he’d packed it in his bag. He realised that he’d hung his jacket and my jacket in the wardrobe in the Radisson and forgotten to take them out and pack them. Oh no! We’ve emailed the hotel to see if they can post them on for us. Fingers crossed!