Back to civilization

Oh well, drunk again.

Today has been quite unproductive, with the exception that we made it from Mysore to Bangalore. We really did SFA this morning; we slept in, had breakfast and packed - and took 8:30am until 1:30pm to achieve that much. The only thing of note for the morning was the aforementioned band playing school back to class.

The train trip was genuinely uneventful too. Despite what we'd heard, first class really was quite good. We got fed, the seats were spacious and comfortable and it didn't stink. The only downside was being ripped off by porters taking our bags to the train for a ludicrous 100 rupees. We have since determined to carry our own bags, which has already confused the crap out of a few people.

Our latest accommodation is comfortable and well located near the heart of the city. We got dropped here by our tour company, who got lost on the way, and had a beer while waiting for our check in to be finalised. Ironically, the only beer available was Foster's - and it actually wasn't too bad.

Soon after settling in we realised we hadn't eaten anything substantial since breakfast and got ourselves lost on the way to the main eating and drinking centre. After a few dangerous road crossings we found our way to Mahatma Gandhi Road, and made our way to one of the tallest buildings on the street, reputed for its city-view bars. We got ourselves a bit confused, having first got into a lift that only went up two floors, but were aided by local generosity and eventually found our way to the 13th floor, where we chose the nearest available bar. It was virtually empty, so we only had a few beers and enjoyed the city view with the setting sun.

On our way to this place we'd seen another bar that had yet to open (most locals don't eat dinner until after 8pm), and we decided to have a look on our way to dinner. But as you can see, it was pretty appealing, so we ended up staying:

We had an awesome entree of risotto balls with blue cheese, which were sufficiently small to remain bite-sized and munchable. They were seriously good.

Our mains matched, and were really, really tasty. I had a chicken dish called 'Ballantine' and Bec had a Burmese curry which really rocked. We ate far too much and drank similarly - we had beers, G&Ts and rums, and we ended up spending close to Au$100. But it was worth it.

After an auto-rickshaw ride that, expectedly, got us lost, we're now crashing out, and are looking forward to a lazy day of a few sites tomorrow followed by a bit of a Bangalore bar crawl.

Signing off.