Yesterday was A's final day of having to go into the office while we are here, so Jaime and D and I set out with Jacob, A and D's driver (he's the better-dressed guy you saw in yesterday's coconut pictures), to Nandi Hills.

Nandi Hills is an ancient hill fortress of southern India, in the Chikkaballapur district of Karnataka state. It is located just 10 km from Chickballapur town and approximately 45 km from the city of Bangalore.  From what I'm told by D, it's also kind of a hot date spot, so you will see young Karnatakan men riding their mopeds up the windy road with their best girl riding on the back, clutching a picnic lunch in a plastic bag.  Nandi Hills is also overrun with monkeys.


On the road to Nandi Hills.
Bathrooms are atrocious in most places (e.g. a dirty hole in the ground with an attendant avidly observing your unscreened process), so some real day-strategizing is required to make sure you will be able to reasonably relieve yourself.  Of course, this assumes you aren't of the substantial category of local men who will use a handy wall along an arterial street downtown.  The restaurant below was the safest place D knew of on the road to Nandi Hills, so we stopped.  The dog in the road you see in the foreground did not move from his resting position in the lane the whole time I waited.  Dogs are remarkably nonchalant here.
 
That's Jacob, with A's and D's car, also in the foreground.  When he is not driving he is checking tire pressure (as here), washing and wiping it down; he is the dedicated keeper of the Toyota Innova.  He speaks Hindi almost exclusively, but understands just (almost) enough English to do the job.


Part of the old fort complex.

The view from Nandi.
 
 

Minutes before I took this, while I was making it down toward the edge, D observed as this monkey snuck up behind some picnickers and reached surreptitiously into their bag.  When they espied him at work, they tried to shoo him off, but he made an attack display, so they moved.  Then, apparently in spite, the monkey peed all over their picnic spot.  Monkey 1, picnickers 0.



So, there are just tons of monkeys up here.  As soon as you park, a few will climb up on your car to rest, for no discernible reason.  There is an old man who wanders around with a stick and will use it to keep them off your car for 10 rupees (about 20 cents); a sort of rural Karnatakan protection racket.

Baby monkeys; it's a date spot for monkeys too.

So, a major novel aspect of visiting the Nandi Hills was that as young westerners, we were a tourist attraction to the Indian tourists.  If you were not walking, you would within a minute be approached by a group of Indian boys, men or women who would approach to well within an American reasonable distance, surround you (at least in semi-circle) and begin snapping camera-phone shots.  They are extremely polite and will smile radiantly at you and generally try to ask what country you are from, but they are just far too close and overly familiar, compared to what you would expect in the cities of America or Central or Western Europe.  Jaime and D were particularly popular, but I was several times asked to shake hands, pose for pictures, etc.

Once we indicated a certain level of comfort, the flood gates opened.  After about the third time, D started having fun with it and shortly after a person would ask for a picture D would start explaining that Jaime was an "American starlet, from television" and that D was "her manager".  Most of the people spoke only Hindi (or Kannada, the local language, or a local language from another part of India), so they may or may not have understood it, though these two guys understood it enough to start saying "Hollywood".  We were soon laughing our asses off.  It was a little out of Jaime's comfort zone, but she rolled with it.

After Nandi, we drove back into Bangalore and went to Commercial Street (a very literally-minded name), which is a shopping district - kind of like the Robertson of India.

We had lunch at place called Woody's, a popular lunch spot for locals.

All of those colorful garlands are hand-strung fresh flowers, which you see a lot of around.


 
I forget what these were called, but they were delicious.  They were kind of like a heavy Indian crepe, filled with potatoes, lentils, cheese and other deliciousness; of course, served with masala and other sauces.  Lunch for us three, with large bottles of Aquafina, was $5.

The commercial highlight of the day for Jaime was pashmina and scarf shopping.  This store was two floors of the most saturated-color fabrics I've ever seen.  When you begin to shop, you do not browse, you are seated at a table, served tea, and then have one or two dedicated salespeople to bring you bundle upon bundle of their offerings.  Our helper on the left was charming and funny and, I think, quite amused by Jaime's enthusiasm.  Jaime was in pleasure overload.

I thought the fact of the fully burka-clad women in the background shopping for aesthetically opulent silk and cashmere scarves was prima facie ironic, but D assures me that it is well known that wealthy muslims are very typically gorgeously festooned beneath the veil - hence the Hermes and Givenchy shopping-sprees of Dubai, et al.  Still, it is a sight for the Westerner.  This photo also gets to something essential about India - vastly different cultures combined in common contexts.

It feels a bit gauche to discuss the prices.  This is very much a middle-class shop we were in, for India, but we were shocked by what we felt was the bargain nature of the goods.  We walked away with items that would have well exceeded $1,000 in America and paid a profound fraction of that figure.

That is not to say that everything is cheap in India.  There are peculiarities about the prices of things - for instance: cars and houses - that make you feel someone has shuffled the deck of reality, as known to Westerners.  The monthly rent/mortgage for our reasonably ideal home here would be more than what we would pay for one in Seattle.  Amazingly, that home would be over a wall and a few blocks away from an absolute slum of homes made of tarps and built upon mud, with foot-wide pathways between them.  India is tremendously surreal in its contrasts.

Last night we had dinner at a hotel that was as opulent as any I've been in, in any part of the world; incredibly landscaped grounds, gorgeously dressed staff, huge pedestaled vessels of water covered in layers of fragrant rose petals.  It was, without hyperbole, palatial and magnificent.  Unfortunately I did not bring a camera and I immediately kicked myself for it.  Fortunately, we are going to a benefit dinner of the Overseas Womens' Club, of which D is a member, at another gorgeous location, tonight.  I will not forget my camera again.

Still loving every mad second of it,

RDW