more stuff,

As I said in an earlier post, the roads in Delhi are harrowing. There is all manner of traffic from horse drawn carts, Tuk-Tuks, cars, bicycles, motorbikes, water trucks and cows. Three lanes are in reality six lanes. Everyone manouvers in and out of whatever space there is honking their horns as they do so.
Its not for the faint hearted! On the back of the rickshaw, I just closed my eyes at times and hoped for the best.
The heat is pretty intense. People cope by sleeping during the worst of it. They tend to pick a spot and lie down regardless of the potential for disaster.......

Others seek out the shade or cool alcoves in Mosques or temple courtyards. "Sleeping People" is one of the images I've taken away from the city.

I went to a lot of temples and mosques. Its forbidden to take pictures inside Hindu temples, which is a shame because to a western eye, they're pretty interesting places full of statues of unfamiliar gods and ritualistic theater. The Mosques were large spaces with wide courtyards and cool shadowy marble.

Behind this Hindu temple was a beautiful garden full of abandoned buildings and interesting sights. A young guy noticed me taking pictures and asked me to take one of his sister who was having some sort of pre-wedding ceremony with her sisters and friends.

The two pics above are of the red fort. Cool fasade but not so interesting inside.

Hope all is well. I've had an interesting 24 hours but feel like the hunchback of Parisian fame.

I went out last night in Bangalore and was underwhelmed to say the least. When I was in Delhi, everyone said this city was a "city of pubs". Great place to watch the world cup games right? WRONG!

The first place I went was called NASA.

When you walk in this "spaceship pub" the first thing you notice is its full of men and its PACKED...... and no its not a gay bar. There are no women drinking in Bangalore it seems. Horrible techno of the cheesiest, worst sort of eurotrash tradition was playing at number 11 .

Uniformed waiters dressed in a cross between head waiter chic and airline pilot camp came to take your order.

Mustaches and seat dancing everywhere you looked. Thinking let alone watching the game at that volume was impossible.

It only got worse.

PUB WORLD, and DOWNTOWN, were bad but in different ways. There were the occaisional women, but they were safely cocooned in the "family section" where non-brothers , were politely but politely banned. The aircon in these places threatened hypothermia. Bangalore is fairly temperate. So why the deep freeze?

Tonight I went into the bar at the Meridian where I'm staying.

Lets just say, it was different from last night.

The bright young things of Bangalore were out in force. It could have been a club in Berlin , London or NYC, except the beer was only $2 and there was a framed picture of a Hindu god behind the bar.

Far too young for me, but a laugh to watch the kids being "oh soooooo wicked".

A bit depressing to see the elderly expats and hotel guests ogling the teenagers...wait, I was one of those creepy old guys! Home to my room scuttle, scuttle, shudder, shudder.

I did a presentation to a group of very clever people tonight, 300 of them in fact.

I was feeling like a cripple.

I had real trouble understanding their accents.

The English they spoke was amazing.

It was old fashioned and proper, but thick with southern Indian inflection.

I got great feedback. They seemed happy. They seemed to think I was some kind of expert. They were maybe not as clever as I thought, but they were very kind.

After an hour flaked out in the bath, I'm afraid I'm in deep shit.

Tomorrow I fly overnight to Seoul and I need this back to sort itself out.

Good night I hope you're feeling better!

T