To get away from the city, without actually getting away, there is a conveniently located botanical garden with lush greenery! There are lots and lots of trees, a lake, over 1800 species of flowers, and most importantly... you guessed it... MONKEYS! This place is all around pretty epic, and of course, where there are trees - there must be climbing! I've been here twice, and both times it has not failed to bring a smile to my face. Perhaps it's because I can take a full breath without choking, or perhaps it's the beauty of the place, you can be the judge of that. Anyway, my first encounter with one of these manifestations of immaculate magnificence that is that of a mischievous monkey was a delightfully good one! He posed a bit for some photos (note: below), and then promptly cruised over to a nearby bench and interrupted a couple that was obviously discussing the essence of marriage and love while eating a snack. He jumped on the bench, perched on the corner like a book-end, and waited until the couple paid their bribe of 1/4th of a sandwich for the monkey kingdoms protection. Once that was all taken care of and the monkey displayed a bit of dominance, he climbed a tree. The end.
Which of course, spurs many wild fantasies of my own endeavors with tree climbing. Unfortunately, I didn't come prepared the first time, and only did some weak-sauce tree climbing due to the sandals and glasses (and I was afraid the monkeys would revolt against me)... but the second time I encountered this wondrous marvel of Nature, I was wearing my climbing shoes. And climbing was done, yes, climbing was done.
After this hair-raising adventure was completed, we thought, hey why not go to the nearby city market?! And to the city market we went. Although, there were a few adventures prior to arriving at the city market which are worth mentioning. First and foremost, is the coconut guy, obviously I want to drink coconut milk out of a coconut that you slash with a giant scythe-like blade, only 50 rupees? Oh you said 15! (this happens quuuuite often) Are you sure? Okay, thanks for the deliciousness, coconut-bearer.
In the process of downing the life-water, we saw a Ganesh factory! Yes, you heard me right. They shoot out Ganesh idols faster than the favorite local eatery Swaadhista shoots out Garlic Naan from the Tandoor oven! This place was pretty impressive. It was wall to wall Ganesh statues! All of them had their own flavor of paint, some had sparkles, some had stripes. It must have been a rare sight to see 3 Westerners wandering in a Ganesh palace, and we got quite the attention, let me tell you. At one point, there was a 3 person layer circle surrounding us, as if we were about to be initiated in some Indian rite of passage, I was a bit scared, but luckily the vitality I got from the coconut-bearer gave me the strength to carry through with my head held high.
When we waded through the people and came outside to see the light once again, we were well on our way to the city market. Now, this is a croooowded place! Wow! Although there was easily 10 vegetables for every person, and that's saying something. I can understand competition of resources, you know, Pizza Hut sets up next to Dominos, or something... but come on, how does it work when there are 50 people in a row selling the identical vegetables?! I just don't get it. But, apparently they do! It was a great adventure. Tons and tons of fruits and vegetables, and that was only the fruit and vegetable section. There was a spice section, a kitchen item section, a weird-things section, a flower section and of course the everything-under-the-sun section. It was a bit different from a Turkish market, though, instead of people shouting (boooo-yaaa-roooonnnn [come take a look]) at me all the time... there were just blank stares. It was really odd, there was no pressure to come look or buy anything, but if you did take interest, well then they thought they had a fish! And getting off the hook involved a cool demeanor, faking that you didn't know how to speak, and slooowly sliding out of sight. In the midst of all the madness, Britain (one of my roommates) and I walked into a little eatery. Everyone was really friendly, and they were chomping down on some items that I never have seen before! So we immediately ordered them and began our experimenting, the first item was called a "Ragi Ball" ... which is the weirdest thing ever ... essentially a big brown ball of dough-like-dough. You pulled some off, which resembled pulling a hot slice of pizza with extra cheese out of the pie, dipped it into some curry sauces and boom ... a big lump of fuel is going down the tubes! The next item, was a fried pepper, this was just tasty, mmm, so tasty. After we finished our market adventures, it was time to head back and digest the day (literally).
The next day, after laundry, I noticed one of my shirts was still a bit damp. So naturally I hung it outside to dry on some wire. There was a bit of commotion down stairs, and immidiately I sprung up with an intuition that something happened to my shirt. Sure enough, the wind had blown it all the way down the wire and into a tree!!! After carefully weighing my options, combined with the climbing practice from the day before, I was ready to do this. I was like a monkey with super powers, I flew up the tree, retrieved my prize, and then watched it flutter as it landed into the helping hands of a fellow man (play-by-play pictured below). The crowd went wild, and I collected my self, and my shirt, took a bow - and headed back up stairs.
On some other day, we headed up-town for a trip to Blossom Book Shop, which has been recommended numerous times for its just incomprehensible selections, and incomprehensible selections it had. There was literally hundreds of thousands of books over 4 floors! They were stacked from the floor, to the roof. There were English books, Spanish books, French books, German books, Indian books, leather-bound books, paper back books, hard cover books, little books, big books, audio books, books about books - you get the idea. It was a very cool place to spend a few hours in, I ended up walking away with a 1960 copy of "Journey to the Center of the Earth" by Jules-Verne and a German/English copy of "Faust" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In all the rubble I also found a few books from the early 1900's, I'm thinking of going back and just buying them all, one of them is bound to be worth gabillions of dollars, right?!
After we (all 3 roommates came to the bookstore) were done at Blossom, Bevan and Eliza said adios and headed off to Kerala, a nearby city.
Britain and I were left to explore the city for the week. Last Sunday, we headed to an area called "Palace Grounds", which is a pretty cool area that is specifically designed for big festivals, arts&crafts, music, what have you. So, we entered where we thought was the first gate, and that started the journey...
The first area we encountered was an AgriTech fair, all about food and the processing of it. This was perfect for Britain as her project is revolving around organic food industry! So we putted around here for a bit, I got a cup of some delicious joe, and then we headed on our merry way. Next we ran into another random entrance, which led us to nothing other than a home-town Gujarat festival! Gujarat is a place in Western India, all these families that live in Bangalore gathered together to have a good time. There were hundreds of booths, foods, arts, crafts, games. After meandering for a bit, we went to the carnival-like game section, and of course I had to play every single one of them! At 10 rupee a pop, why not?! The first one was a classic throw-the-ball-to-knock-over-all-the-cans game, after clarifying that they wouldn't get mad at me if I threw the ball really hard and broke something elsewhere in the room, I accepted the challenge. The next event that happened nearly split space-time itself, as my rocket-launched rubber cricket ball bellowed towards the sullen stack of cans, I felt the cans cringe as the ball impeded into the shabby structure and successfully separated the set. BOOOOOM. Give me my candy bar! On to the next event. "Card Ninja" ... CARD NINJA. Are you kidding me? I'm a ninja, let's do this. You get 3 cards, and you must ninja-throw them into a watermelon. Obviously I was up for the task, and picked 3 aces of doom. As they sliced through the air, silencing the room with the vortex of velocity they generated, the watermelon seemed to reach out arms as the card entered in a perfect 45 degree angle. BOOOOOOM. Give me some tic-tacs! On to the next one. Now, let me just state at the start, I was robbed. Robbed I tell you. They set up an impossible task, just impossible. No one could have done it. Not even you! Anyway, here we have a bowl full of M&Ms, and a popsicle stick. What do you have to do, I hear you asking. Well, let me tell you. First off, this is a timed game (which they rigged to give me only a mere 12 seconds of the minute, I'm sure)... you have to place M&M #1 on the table, then place Popsicle stick on top of this M&M, take M&M #2 and place it on the end of the stick, then with a fierce motion - smash the other end of the popsicle stick, sending M&M #2 high flying into the air... now as the M&M is approaching the speed of light, you must use auto-lock vision, find it in the air, and proceed to run under it and catch it in your mouth. Sounds impossible, right? Well, after a few tries, I managed to do this remarkable feat of character. Letting out a lions roar, I let the Gujarat population know I was the carnival-king. I was then given the tidbit of information that I had to complete this Herculean task a total of FIVE times. With spirits sunken, the last M&Ms fell to the floor, and all of India grew sad. But being the resilient gamer I am, I ventured to the next booth. Here I found a task for all "Operation" fans, it was a rendition of the ever so classic, don't-touch-the-wire-or-it-will-beep game! I prepared myself, took a few calming and restorative breathes, and began my quest with surgical precision as my challengers looked on in awe. "He's like a robot!" I heard one of them think. "Such steadiness! He must be a surgeon" I heard another text a friend. First curve, completed. Second curve, completed. Then it happened, I realized with both of my elbows planted on the table, that I could move no farther to the right, where the rest of the wire glared at me. What do I do?! With a wire-circle of a centimeter in diameter, the margin of error is slim to none. I pressed on, blindsided by my own lack of awareness, my right hand nudged the wire, sending it into a colossal collision of destiny with my wire-circle... "Noooooooooooooo" I heard myself scream to the gods. My head bent in shame. I received a reassuring, "That was the farthest anyone has ever gotten!" from the tasks designer. Even that and a piece of consolation chocolate couldn't bring myself to stop crying. On the inside, at least. All this game winning (and losing) built up a hefty appetite. Britain and I headed to the food area, where we successfully tried every type of food offered. There was many odd and equally delicious dishes, I happily stuffed myself, and washed it down with a cup of juice made from roses. How that makes sense, I do not know, but did it taste good? Of course... of course.
We bid the Gujaratians goodbye, and headed to the next area of Palace Grounds. Here was the "Sunday Soul Sante" ... a big open-air arts&crafts&music festival. This was a cool deal, we immediately made friends with a few shop keepers as we roamed around. One of the stalls was selling chocolate, and seeing a mint flavored one, I indulged! Oh the glorious taste of mint, you have eluded me for the last month and a half, I have tasted you again... I let the flavor linger on my lips, in my mind, and it infused my spirit with a lightness unmatched by any. Walking around the festival for the next few hours was fun, and we ended up taking a break in a stall that caught our attention. It was called the "Travelers Caravan" and it was run by a nice girl who we ended up exchanging information with, and she led us through a sound-meditation as well. Too much fun in one day, we headed home.
The next day, Britain and I decided to take a nice little float out on our Madivala lake! We paid the total sum of 40 rupee for a 45 minute boat rental, and set out on our way. They were pretty old school boats, and they had foot pedals. Now, I don't know how fast we should have been going when we pedaled, but I am sure it was suppose to be faster than we did. Of course, they had us set off into the tide, and into the wind, but we won't mentioned that! It was a nice cruise, we saw some pelicans which took refuge in a neighboring tree. Everything was peaceful. And then it happened......... a UFO (unidentified floating object) was coming into view. I made a few comments about the movie Anaconda and that's all she wrote. All I can remember was the fear, I (or someone else...) started protesting that this was not actually happening --- that we weren't about to be eaten by a river snake. Climbing up onto the seat as if it was a contest to represent the best mountain-goat pose, and demanded we veer out of the way of the monster! After a few chuckles, we seemingly avoided a heart attack, and the river snake. Take a look for yourself. The rest of the journey was a good one, we floated around the lake, listened to some music coming from bordering houses, and made our way back to shore.
And last but not least... RAWR IT'S A T-REX!!!!!!!!!
That's my story and I am sticking to it...
Peace and Love :)
