red dot little duck

We left Spokane at 6am Thursday, December 8, 2012 on a journey to Bangalore. It was a short flight, not a lot to report on; read a book… Siddhartha. I think I will be reading that again…

We had a long layover in the Denver airport. A campout. We watched the plane pull up that would take us to Frankfurt, Germany and waited. No problem. 7.5 hours. Gave us plenty of time to walk the entire airport in search of soup. Which, we never found.

Man… lets go already!

Plane number two: fairly uneventful flight. This is a good thing. I watched three movies, dozed off a few times, ate airline meals (a story in themselves) – even had a beer. Good beer too. Something German. The Frankfurt airport was insane. It seemed extremely unorganized and super slow. And there we were, in another airport. Camped out. Watching the plane we were about to board that would take us to Bangalore.

Plane number three: another 8 hours on board. I slept, chatted a bit with the Indian woman next to me, slept some more, ate airline meals – skipped the beer.

Finally, we get off the plane in Bangalore, get in line and wait. Immigration. I think we got into the slowest line imaginable. After two hours we got through and our driver was there to pick us up. Vali – a very nice man. It was about 3am Saturday, December 10, 2012. Things were still pretty surreal at this point.

It was dark but the moon was full. Shadows cast across billboards and construction sites. Piles of garbage, everywhere. Cows. Dogs. More garbage. People sleeping on the street or in small tent like huts. Most constructed directly next to a business or house. Poverty next to plenty. Surreal. This was Bangalore… first sight. I was both thrilled and saddened. I will see Bangalore again, perhaps after my time here in Mysore it will be with new eyes and a better understanding of things.

Through dazed eyes we continued the 3.5 hour drive to Mysore.