This weekend the volunteers decided to have
a girls' weekend in Bangalore...the closest big city, which is about 2-3 hours
away. We needed a break from everything and also wanted to celebrate a birthday
and going away. Bangalore is known as India's Silicon Valley and that
comparison is spot on. The tech industry is booming in Bangalore and all around
you see "Western" shops, restaurants, companies, etc. Since Bangalore
is the center of Western business in India, there are a lot of foreigners
living there for work. Unlike Hosur, we were not the only Caucasians
there!
Our day started with eating at the local McDonalds!
I needed some chicken mcnuggets, fries, and a hot fudge sundae. McDonalds is
like the college kids hangout, and we saw a ton of people celebrating their
birthday with a group of friends, a veggie patty hamburger, and a cell phone
taking pictures. After lunch, we went shopping at Mantree Mall, a three story
typical mall. There were not many American stores there, but British stores
like Marks and Spencers. There were also typical "Clare's
Accessories"- like stores, clothing stores that offered Western,
Indian-Western, and traditional Indian clothes. My friend Ale and I searched
all over the mall to find an outfit for dinner and going out, considering we
brought no nice clothes. We definitely could not go out in sweats and baggy
t-shirts...especially since girls dress up big time over here. Since it was
India you would think it would still be conservative, but in Bangalore we saw
girls wearing short dresses, low tops, tons of makeup, etc. I was definitely
not expecting it!
For dinner we went to an Italian restaurant
in UB City called Toscanos. UB city is like the Beverly Hills of Bangalore with
Louis Vuitton, Gucci, etc. It's owned by the richest man of India, so needless
to say it was very ornate (reminded me a little of The Forum Shops at Caesar's
Palace). Dinner was super nice! The restaurant was populated with mostly
foreigners with giant groups of people enjoying their evening. UB City is
definitely the place to go. I was so excited to have a change from Indian food
(specifically Shanti Bhavan food). I ordered pasta with artichokes and onions.
It was super yummy! I also had my first glass of wine in 3 weeks J.
We finished dinner around 10 and then
headed to the clubs at UB City…Skye and Shiro. Both were outdoors with
beautiful views of the city lights. Girls had free cover while boys had to pay
250 rupees. It was definitely an interesting experience! The clubs were packed,
so much so that it was difficult to walk in them. A group of 6 girls (clearly
not from Bangalore) got quite the look when we walked in and we had
several older gentleman come up to try to talk to us. Fortunately we were able
to make quick escapes although a man gave me his card (in India they give out
cards with their number since its like 19 numbers). All of us just wanted to have
a good time and dance, but we quickly learned dancing is not allowed in India.
A couple minutes after we set up our little dance circle, a security guard came
up to us and stopped our little dance party. He then followed us the whole time
to make sure we did not dance again! All we wanted was to just dance! Haha
The clubs in India close at 11, yet the
night was still young. A couple weeks ago, 2 of the volunteers met a Canadian
and an American at one of the clubs. They invited us to an ex-pat party, apparently
all the foreigners tend to meet each other and almost every weekend there are
house parties exclusively for ex-pats. This was like a typical college house
party, except with an age range of like 19-55 and people from all over the
world (except for the country that we were in lol) It was actually really fun
and I was able to meet other people living in India for a period of time.
Considering I usually now go to bed at
9:30, I was pretty exhausted the next day since we got home at around 2(and
then decided to watch Wipeout lol). Nevertheless, the next day was filled with
shopping at MG Road. I didn’t bring that many clothes with me so I spent the
day trying on Indian kurtas and harem pants. We were told that there was a
great coffee shop nearby and we ended up having breakfast and lunch there.
Surprisingly there are no Starbucks in India, so everyone had to get their
Frappuccino fix at this place! We left Bangalore around 4 to head back to
Shanti Bhavan.
Overall Bangalore is a great city. Yes it
is extremely crowded and overwhelming, but I had fun and it was a nice change
of pace from life at Shanti Bhavan.
