Bangalore diaries - the first weekend

My first weekend in Bangalore turned out to be quite good. After the not so good first 4 days here I was looking at the weekend with a lot of hope. Things didn’t start too well as my friends here had other plans and I was to spend the day with me with nothing to do. I didn’t want to spend the entire day in hotel so I decided to explore the nearby areas. I asked the hotel staff for some nearby place that I could visit and he told me to go to Forum mall. He gave me the directions to reach the mall. I had to change a bus at Kundalahalli Gate (might still have got the spelling wrong) to reach the mall. I had already been to the mall for lunch twice and wasn’t too excited but still decided to go there as it also had a movie hall. I wanted to watch Rockstar but that was planned with a friend for Sunday. So I bought the tickets for the next available movie which turned out to be Immortals. It was a decent movie. After the movie spent some time in the mall and came back to the hotel following the same route. I didn’t want to have dinner at the hotel but there wasn’t another option. I switched on the TV, logged in to the internet browsing some sites. Then my friend called asking about my dinner plans. Since I hadn’t had my dinner my friend came to pick me up and we went to my friend’s house. It was the first time I had a cup of home made tea – it was wonderful. Then had Palak Dal for dinner and luckily it was my favourite dal. We spoke about certain things and it was time well spent. I also came to know that my friend had already watched Rockstar with someone else ditching me. We decided to meet the next day for breakfast and go some place.

Sunday morning started as expected. I called my friend who was still asleep and said wouldn’t be joining for breakfast, but would meet around noon. We met around 12:30 and proceeded towards my friend’s friend’s house. It was around 30-40 mins drive and I was asked to drive. The car being new it took a little time to get used to the car. But I must say driving in Bangalore is not fun at all. As soon as the car picks up speed a speed-breaker greets you. We reached the friend’s place and had a wonderful lunch. Then when my friend enquired about the places to visit in Bangalore we got the response as “There are no places to visit in Bangalore. But there are lots of places around Bangalore.” That came as a shock as I expected Bangalore to have some decent places to visit. We finally decided to go to Lal Bagh. It was a nice place to spend time with friends although it had nothing spectacular about it. The drive to Lal Bagh was awesome though thanks to GPS and blocked roads.

While returning from Lal Bagh my friend wanted to have momos and samosa – a deadly combo. No one knew a place where they could get samosas but they knew a place where we could get momos. We reached the place only to find that momos were out of stock. Awesome. We had a cup of tea and some pakoras instead. We then headed to my firend’s friend’s home. On the way they found a place where they got samosas which pleased my friend. We had a game of Monopoly. The international monopoly was quite different from the game I had played in my childhood. I ended up having the most number of cards, the least amount of money and the highest rent payer. We had soupy noodles for dinner and bid goodbye to my new friends. I and my friend drove back and thankfully I wasn’t driving this time. We had a decent discussion on the way and to continue it further went to my friend’s house. We had ice tea and a long discussion.

Overall it turned out to be a decent weekend and the first time I actually liked Bangalore in my entire time here.