Last Saturday was my first weekend in Bangalore; no one else was coming to the lab (and I’m not … supposed to touch the equipments without a chaperon); so I decided to take a short tour around the city. There were some organized tours advertised on the Internet, but this being my first week (and my not being too familiar with the city’s public transportation system), I decided to venture out alone.

After a quick Google search, I had my primary objective: Vidhana Soudha. Well, long story short, I didn’t do much touring of the place (the gates looked so forbidding; I wasn’t sure if tourists were welcome in that place), and this picture was all I could take away:
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But I did take a walk around the parks, both near the city center
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and near the Raman Research Institute
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which was nice. And I also sampled the local drinks, including one moosambi juice (bars weren’t open in the morning, unfortunately).

If I had to pick one striking difference in India so far (what some other people have been calling “culture shock”, although I wouldn’t call it that—let’s call it … a vague nostalgia, for me at least) is the different … character of road signs. I’ve been warned about lanes well before I came to India, but I wasn’t told about these:
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Oh. And here’s one traffic rule I found out while walking around:
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P.S. I got around this time on bus—both to the city center and back—despite the fact that I couldn’t find good information on the bus system online (or on the supposed route map at some bus stops). It turns out when you have a GPS (that instantly lets you know when the bus has taken a “wrong turn”), taking a random bus going in the approximately right direction works out fairly well. Also, it helped that I was willing to walk a fair distance (and the day pass was fairly cheap; only 32 rupees).

P.S. Oh, and haggling is very much … in fashion here. I was able to haggle a map of Bangalore down from 150 rupees to 100 rupees, and a hat from 100 rupees to 80 rupees by simply saying that original price was “too much”. Of course, the map was rather imprecise (and not as useful as my GPS) and the hat was cheaply made, but well, I bought them as souvenirs, not practical purpose (which was why any price was too much).