A few days ago we reluctantly said goodbye to Palolem, took a TukTuk to the local train station and bought our tickets to Goa station. Our seats (ha) were in General Class and were great value, 45 rupees for a 45 minute journey – at that price Plymouth to London would cost about £3.50!

It wasn’t clear which platform the train was going from so we were reassured when we realised that there was only one platform. Reassured that is until people started to climb down from the platform and wander across the tracks to wait at the further track. Turns out they were catching the Cochin train from the other non-existent platform!

Our train came in on time and alongside the platform so no need for Leishia to manage a five foot drop in a pencil skirt! We boarded the train and I was immediately befriended by an old chap who proudly told me that he was seventy five and only had three teeth!

 Quite a moustache!

From Goa we were catching the overnight sleeper to Bangalore; last time we took a sleeper we were in class 2AC which I concluded must stand for “twice as cold”. This time we were in the same class but although the AC was running the fan wasn’t which made for a very pleasant journey.

We only had three days in Bangalore and they were pretty full. The first evening we met up with a local couple, Tautik and Rohini, who had travelled all around India in 2007. We first made contact a couple of years ago after I saw their slideshow, here it is:

Tautik and Rohini were a truly vibrant couple with a real love of travel. We spent a super evening together talking about their trip and our plans and I think by the end of the evening they were ready to get their rucksacks out and get on the road again. Quite late on in the conversation Tautik casually mentioned that he was a runner and had run a 75k ultra the day before! We talked about running then!

On Monday we went to the Bangalore office of our shipping agent. We spent a couple of hours finalising the import documentation for Elsie, hopefully everything is now in place for a smooth process in Chennai. We shall see.

Tuesday was fun, Murthy one of my old work colleagues now lives in Bangalore (his home town) and I had told him several years ago that one day we would make it to Bangalore. Murthy collected us from our apartment and we spent the afternoon and evening at his house. His wife Sandie cooked some spectacular dishes and we sat around all day chatting. Strangely enough the last time we saw them was at their apartment in Chicago when we did much the same thing!

 Leishia and Sandie

 Leishia and Murthy – smoking!

After dinner Sandie presented Leishia with a beautiful sari, picture quality is poor but there will be others during the trip for sure:

I felt as if I were going home with a different wife!

The rest of our time in Bangalore was all about sight seeing, first port of call was Bangalore Palace (the old Maharajah still lives there):

It’s a fascinating old building in the middle of the city but is in need of a huge dose of TLC as witnessed by what was once a wonderful conservatory:

and this beautiful lodge:

The best part of the visit was undoubtedly the audio tour, it’s just a shame that the place is in such bad repair, the original furniture is nowhere to be seen and the estate has been encroached on by badly built eyesores.

After the palace we took a TukTuk to Lalbagh botanical gardens, along the way we passed this happy chap:

Lalbagh is a real oasis in what has become an increasingly crowded city.

We were on our way out of the park when we came across this little gem:

What I want to know is what they do with it when it’s full!

And on the subject of strange sights, it seems you can buy anything in India:

Time to stop I think!