Out for a wander

MAM had spent the whole day at the hotel yesterday vegging out and was now ready to explore a bit. Our driver told us that Sunday was his day off, so we decided to stick close to the hotel again rather than try to procure another car. So after my breakfast, 1k swim and 12k treadmill run we decided to walk to the Big Bazaar store two long blocks from the hotel. It is basically an Indian version of a Wal-mart. I had walked there yesterday and bought a $2 t-shirt and some cookies and hair conditioner (since the stuff at the hotel is crap). You can get just about anything you want there from kitchen supplies, clothes, food, etc. We wandered around there for a bit and then decided to venture further.

We got as far as across the street where behind some gates were some very nice looking gardens and treed grounds, and what I thought was an office building- very unlike any scenery we had seen so far. We asked the security guy at the gate if we could wander around the grounds, and I was expecting him to say no, but he lead us in and to the building sitting just inside. I tried to explain we just wanted to walk around outside, but either he did not understand or he was checking in with occupants. A woman answered the door and again I explained we just wanted to walk around, but she insisted that we come in and look at the demonstration. I was a little reluctant as I wasn't sure what she wanted to show us, but after stepping inside I was glad I did. The building was actually a show room for some expensive duplexes that they were building. The place was almost 6000 square feet and was spectacular. There was teak wood and marble everywhere and the rooms were all very big as you might imagine. This unit was on two levels, but they do three level units as well. We were informed that they went for $1M US and that included all the furniture and fixtures. Quite a deal really, but pretty unreachable for 99% of the Indian population. We wanted to take some pictures, but felt that it wasn't really appropriate.

We left there to continue on our walk, without really getting to walk around the grounds after all, but felt like we were pretty fortunate to stumble upon that find.

We then continued on towards the Aon office which was only about 1K further away. We wanted to take a closer look at the 'free' hospital that sits directly across the street. Not sure how the free hospital works, but it looks pretty impressive and I hope to be able to get a closer look at some point before I leave. Again it is gated and you can't just wander around without appropriate clearance.

We then decided to try to get back to the hotel from a different direction. It should have been easy, but we ended up nowhere where we thought we should have been. We ended up walking through a fairly lower class street. It was a mix of run down apartments, man made shacks and and street stalls. MAM and I got some interesting looks as it was clear we did not belong among the dogs, cows and chickens that were running around the streets among all of the people. We eventually realized that we were not going to make it back to the hotel going in that direction and ended up backtracking our steps. It was a pretty interesting outing as we felt we had seen how a majority of the people in Bangalore really live as well as how some of the very privileged live.