Bangalore vehicles: Top priority is a working horn!

Went out to a few places today...Sunday...a slow day for Bangalore traffic and crowds. In looking at the first 2 pictures above, this represents “a slow day” (999K people on this side street versus the usual million). I walked a lot outside with a Bangalore local; the weather is truly great right now. It is considered “winter” season in India (a 2 month period referred to as “Hemant”) and so the “high” got all the way down to a chilly wintery 82 degrees. Haha. I went out on a limb and crossed the street (where there was a Starbucks AND a Krispy Kreme) to go to a coffee shop called Matteo, and it was awesome. Really enjoyed the coffee flavor, variety and presentation—a fancy place to get a shot of caffeine.

Also, we rode the Bangalore metro which is a set of rails high above the city that basically cross about 8-10 kilometers. You pay 17 INRs each way and can ride this metro and see the city from above. I had my camera around my neck, and while standing on the deck awaiting the metro, I took the 2 pictures you see posted here. The guard/security guy was standing beside me watching me intently, and he let me take these photos before saying “No cameras allowed ma’am”. As he had watched me take it out, and focus and get the shots, it was quite nice that he allowed me to move ahead with breaking the law a couple of times before he told me to put it away. The metro is an awesome ride that allows you to see so many views of Bangalore "from the top". They have a system for this metro where you purchase a token, and it is black and plastic. You place it on top of the computerized “gate” (which is quite fancy and electronic) to get inside the metro area to ride. At the end, you have to pull it out again and drop it in to a coin slot before the computerized gate opens and you can get out. I have no idea what happens if you lose that token along the way!

Finally, I toured the inside of a church, as they were preparing for the evening service. It was very beautiful inside, yet none of my pictures processed well enough to post. There is only one here, of the gold plaque that hangs on the wall, where the Hymns that are planned for the service are displayed. Exquisite gold design with obviously a lot of planning and preparation for each service, as they sing quite a few hymns, I noticed!

On the way home I took an Uber and, well, there is always excitement on the road. The basic paved roads of Bangalore are fine. Like any other city. Well, there are shortcut roads that connect these paved ones that can be harrowing. My cabbie tonight decided he would take a shortcut. It is his car, and if he wants to drive through the potholes, I am fine with this, as a shortcut in Bangalore can save 30 minutes. Well, this particular road was very narrow, of course dirt, with deep trenches on each side. I kept saying to him (as he swerved to avoid the potholes and headed directly towards this trench), “Be careful of this ditch” and he of course did not understand English, and would say “We take shortcut, ma’am”. There were motorcycles all over this road, and truthfully, with the hilly terrain on this road, they probably get higher jumps than you see on TV in some of the professional motorcross events. At one point, 2 motorcycles flew out of a side road in front of us and of course, we blew the horn. We blew it long, and we blew it hard. The guys on the bikes did not seem to appreciate this. They stopped. They stared, and there was yelling. One guy banged on the hood of cabbie’s car, and I thought to myself “This is like Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome out here!”. I waved and smiled to these bikers (as in “We are soooo sorry”, with full apologetic "Namaste-style" hand gestures), and they drove off. I feel like I probably kept this cabbie from getting “into it” with these bikers!