Fast ride to breakfast

The Meridien Hotel figures large in my novel, as a place of assignation. And before I got the offer to stay with people here, I was planning on spending at least a couple nights there for research purposes. Since I'm not doing that, however, I still needed to scope it out to see whether anything I had said about it was accurate.

To get there, I decided to take the standard Bangalore "autocab" or autorickshaw. These are ubiquitous, whereas actual taxicabs are much rarer. Sure enough, it was easy to flag one down. I had been warned the drivers would try to overcharge me, so I attempted to bargain down from the driver's first offer of 50 rupees to 30. He said 40, and I said all right -- 10 rupees is something like 7 cents, so who cares. As I stood there palavering, three boys bounded up. I had passed them on my way out of the building, and I already recognized them as neighbor boys. One of them attempted to help the driver -- an older gent who looked like he wished he could retire from driving in the insane Bangalore traffic -- understand where I wanted to go. When I settled with the driver on 40 rupees, one of the boys exclaimed, in a tone both delighted and appalled: "Too much!"

"Yeah, I know," I said, climbing into the convenance.

Off we went. Apparently we were going in the opposite direction of commute traffic -- it was about 8:00 a.m. -- because we tore down the street at a pretty good clip. One of the experiences of going anywhere in Bangalore is that it's flat and there are a lot of trees and the road tends to bend a lot, so it's hard to see very far ahead. Basically you just tear down the road.

I was glad to see that one illusion I'd had about the roads -- that they were full of potholes -- was not true. The ride was quick and comfortable.

We arrived opposite the hotel. The driver stopped at the side of a long straight stretch of tree-lined road. Unfortunately there was no safe way across the road. On my side there was a golf course; on the other, the hotel was the first thing that had appeared after a long stretch of wall. I don't know what was on other other side of the wall besides trees, but there is a great deal of land around here that is dedicated to the military, the police, the municipality, etc. In any case the hotel was the only thing along that whole stretch of road.

I was on one side now, the hotel on the other. Between us, four lanes of traffic. Getting halfway across was not a problem, but the commute traffic was in the other lanes, and I had to wait several minutes for a break before scampering across. You have to be a little fearless. On the plus side, there are usually lots of pedestrians the drivers are aware of. Not on this road, however.

I got across and entered the hotel. Very luxe inside -- but the lobby and restaurant was not air-conditioned. I had a continential breakfast that was good, with excellent pastry, and very expensive. If the lads who thought my 40 Rs. auto ride was too much, they would have been apoplectic at the 550 Rs. cost of breakfast.

I made the most of it, then walked back. I had drawn another map to help me in this. The sidewalks were mostly acceptable, though I had to cross some heinous intersections. In my next post I'll describe the traffic.