Culture, commerce, and coffee

I had booked the apartment for three days. The area was fine, but it was quite residential. There was not much happening there. So I decided to move somewhere more central. I’d also discovered that Bangalore has a permanent traffic jam. Getting anywhere by auto or taxi takes a long time. I needed to be close to the metro, which is the fastest way of travelling in Bangalore.

I got a private room in a hostel. There were plenty of spaces to relax and meet people there.

Outside the hostel was a sign for recycling, the “Daily Dump”. Helene told me that in Thiruvananthapurum there’s no rubbish collection. There are few places to recycle stuff. The result is that people either burn their waste or dump it somewhere. Everywhere, you see a lot of rubbish on the streets and rivers.

After checking in, I walked to the metro and went to the National Gallery of Modern Art. The main gallery was temporarily closed! This meant there was nothing to do. I sat in the garden and read for a while.

Cubbon Park is a popular destination and a place of peace in a noisy city. On the way there, I passed some government offices and a court building.

I crossed the road and headed for the State Central Library. I loved the interior and sat for a while.

I walked through the park and headed for Church Street.

Church Street is one of the commercial centres in Bangalore. It’s a crossroad, where east meets west. This was the most touristy area I’d seen so far on this trip. There were plenty of Indian and western tourists. The Indians dressed like westerners. And the westerners tried to dress like Indians.

There were plenty of bookshops selling English books. In one, I got talking to someone who was considering buying The Covenant of Water. I said it was a brilliant book — the sort you don’t want to end. He was a software engineer and lived in Bangalore. He had worked in Leeds, England. We had a long chat.

After visiting several bookshops, I settled in a coffee shop. It was nice and cool. I continued reading Klara and the Sun. After a while, I realised I was getting cold. The air-conditioning was on full blast. Someone who’d been sitting in my section of the cafe had asked to move because it was so cold.

I stepped out into the evening heat and headed back to the hostel.