Welcome back. Hopefully, for at least a few of you, the title sprang to life in your mind as the sound of Will Farrell pretending to be Robert Goulet. If not, watch the video clip at the end of the post.
Seriously though, this post is just to show some photos I've taken while out and about in Southern India. And first, this is the guy who is kind enough to wait 9 hours for me at work during the week and take me to all these places on the weekends. Sure he's getting paid for the driving, but I assume I'm also taking him away from some family time, so he gets his props.
Lal Bagh Botanical Garden - October 8, 2012
With Columbus Day (US) off from work, my driver took me to Lal Bagh and showed me around. The name"Lal Bagh (or Lalbagh)" translates to Red Garden. For this time of year, not everything was blooming yet again, so it wasn't as colorful as I'd hoped. You can see some pictures here. There are also a couple of short videos here and here.
Bannerghatta Zoo - October 13, 2012
The zoo itself received mixed reviews. I've added videos of the hippos splashing in the water (they have other dry tanks to move around but prefer to stay in the water), some monkeys chasing each other above the aviary, and a leopard/panther stalking the zoogoers (me). One of the coolest things is that you can get right up near the elephants and you can touch them. Also, I had heard from a few sources that the safari was a good experience. For only about $5 more than the park entry fee, we drove around in a school bus through a few contained areas to see bears, lions, tigers, and other wildlife. Azmath politely insisted I sit near the window to get a better view. He then told me, "They've only recently added the mesh cage around the bus after a little girl was snatched out of one of the windows maybe 3 or 4 years ago." See the photos here.
Tamil Nadu - October 13 (cont'd)
After seeing all there was to see at the zoo, we still had a few hours to kill before a dinner reservation I had made. So Azmath called up some of his other driver-friends, and asked what other "touristy" stuff was in the area. Apparently the public recently became aware of a small waterfall another 30-45 minutes drive to the Southeast. This was actually my first experience truly being in the "country" in India...open roads, large fields, rice paddies, and the occasional small town. The view was spectacular and a welcome change from 30+ straight days of concrete and traffic. When we arrived, I had to walk down about 200 stairs to reach the valley below where the waterfall was visible. I had no idea we crossed into another state (from Karnataka to Tamil Nadu) while searching for the spot. Since my driver's car is for "commercial use," he is technically not supposed to travel outside the state without paperwork and paying the appropriate taxes. On the way home he told me, he had no such papers, and if we had been stopped, we likely would have either had to bribe them to let us back to Karnataka or leave something of value with them to return and get the papers taken care of. Fun stuff.
Big Banyan Tree - October 20, 2012
One other neat-looking place I wanted to visit was Dodda Alada Mara. It's also on the outskirts of Bangalore. Azmath on more than one occasion let me know there's really nothing to see there...it's just a big tree. The wiki page isn't so helpful explaining, but I guess banyan = fig, so it's a giant fig tree. Also, and I'm not 100% sure of this, but the tree doesn't have a central trunk like most tree's we think of. There are hundreds and thousands of smaller, individual stalks/trunks growing up out of the ground spread over a huge area. It's almost like a series of vines. In any case, there are also quite a collection of monkeys living at the tree, and they are feed insane amounts of crap from the visitors. They are not really afraid of people, and a few were grabbing my hands and pockets looking for more snacks which was even a little unnerving. In any case, I'm happy I was persistent with Azmath because it was definitely like nothing I've seen or experienced before. Here are some pics and a video of me feeding one of the monkeys.
As for the Will Farrell reference above. Well here's that video as well. I've clipped the begging because it's a bit of a long clip, most of it doesn't apply, and there's some language early on that might offend some.
Still more to come next time!
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| Azmath, so happy |
Lal Bagh Botanical Garden - October 8, 2012
With Columbus Day (US) off from work, my driver took me to Lal Bagh and showed me around. The name"Lal Bagh (or Lalbagh)" translates to Red Garden. For this time of year, not everything was blooming yet again, so it wasn't as colorful as I'd hoped. You can see some pictures here. There are also a couple of short videos here and here.
Bannerghatta Zoo - October 13, 2012
The zoo itself received mixed reviews. I've added videos of the hippos splashing in the water (they have other dry tanks to move around but prefer to stay in the water), some monkeys chasing each other above the aviary, and a leopard/panther stalking the zoogoers (me). One of the coolest things is that you can get right up near the elephants and you can touch them. Also, I had heard from a few sources that the safari was a good experience. For only about $5 more than the park entry fee, we drove around in a school bus through a few contained areas to see bears, lions, tigers, and other wildlife. Azmath politely insisted I sit near the window to get a better view. He then told me, "They've only recently added the mesh cage around the bus after a little girl was snatched out of one of the windows maybe 3 or 4 years ago." See the photos here.
Tamil Nadu - October 13 (cont'd)
After seeing all there was to see at the zoo, we still had a few hours to kill before a dinner reservation I had made. So Azmath called up some of his other driver-friends, and asked what other "touristy" stuff was in the area. Apparently the public recently became aware of a small waterfall another 30-45 minutes drive to the Southeast. This was actually my first experience truly being in the "country" in India...open roads, large fields, rice paddies, and the occasional small town. The view was spectacular and a welcome change from 30+ straight days of concrete and traffic. When we arrived, I had to walk down about 200 stairs to reach the valley below where the waterfall was visible. I had no idea we crossed into another state (from Karnataka to Tamil Nadu) while searching for the spot. Since my driver's car is for "commercial use," he is technically not supposed to travel outside the state without paperwork and paying the appropriate taxes. On the way home he told me, he had no such papers, and if we had been stopped, we likely would have either had to bribe them to let us back to Karnataka or leave something of value with them to return and get the papers taken care of. Fun stuff.
Big Banyan Tree - October 20, 2012
One other neat-looking place I wanted to visit was Dodda Alada Mara. It's also on the outskirts of Bangalore. Azmath on more than one occasion let me know there's really nothing to see there...it's just a big tree. The wiki page isn't so helpful explaining, but I guess banyan = fig, so it's a giant fig tree. Also, and I'm not 100% sure of this, but the tree doesn't have a central trunk like most tree's we think of. There are hundreds and thousands of smaller, individual stalks/trunks growing up out of the ground spread over a huge area. It's almost like a series of vines. In any case, there are also quite a collection of monkeys living at the tree, and they are feed insane amounts of crap from the visitors. They are not really afraid of people, and a few were grabbing my hands and pockets looking for more snacks which was even a little unnerving. In any case, I'm happy I was persistent with Azmath because it was definitely like nothing I've seen or experienced before. Here are some pics and a video of me feeding one of the monkeys.
As for the Will Farrell reference above. Well here's that video as well. I've clipped the begging because it's a bit of a long clip, most of it doesn't apply, and there's some language early on that might offend some.
Still more to come next time!
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