July 25 - Bombs over Bangalore

Kingfisher airlines is definitely the best airlines in India. Lots of leg room, really good food, awesome masala chai, and in flight entertainment! Needless to say, the flight from Hyderabad to Bangalore was great.

I arrived to very rainy weather. It almost felt like the plane was going to skid off of the runway. My uncle picked me up and we went back to his place. Had some food, chatted a while and fell asleep. I woke up at ten am (late start, I was dead tired). I asked my uncle to take me to a local gym so I could get a quick workout in before I went back to see Becca.

He took me to the same place where I went for my massage, but across the hallway to the gym. I got assigned a guy who couldn't speak any english. He was my personal trainer! There's a lot of people who use the gym here and who also are very big and buff. Haha, they must have thought I didn't know how to exercise because my current physical appearance isn't impressive in any way. Anyhow, he got me to do stretches then threw me on the treadmill, elliptical, and bike. He was stunned to see that I was very fit and that this wasn't very strenous for me. I think to test me, he had me do 50 painful crunches lol. With that, he called it a day, but I was very impressed with the gym and the knowledge of the trainers.

My uncle took me back to his place for a shower and then we were off to Cauvery. Cauvery is a government regulated handicrafts emporium. This place was very cool! Prices were reasonable and the handicrafts were awesome. Bought quite a few things here. We headed over to my younger cousins girls school. We got there and she wanted to give me a tour of her school. So we walked around and I was fairly impressed. It was a beautiful school. With that we headed back to their place.

After lunch, my aunt and I decided to head out to do some shopping for kurtis (short sleeved tops for women) and pick up my other cousin from his school. Sanju (cousin) wanted to go to a mall called Garuda Mall but my aunt was adament that going to commercial street would be the better place. As it turns out, it was a good idea. We headed over to commercial street after picking up my cousin from his school (which was huge!) and started shopping around when my aunt received a phone call. She got off the phone and said we needed to head over to KFC, there's been a bomb blast near Garuda Mall. So we went over there, fed my cousin then drove back to their apartment. The cell network was down, landlines, as well as there was no power. So we killed time while everyone was tense and I started packing.

2 hours later the power came back on and my bags were packed. We heard that there were 8 low intensity bomb blasts around Bangalore and 2 people had died. What a send off from India eh? I do respect everyone here though because everyone was calm and collected. We decided to have me at the airport earlier. After a really heavy dinner (I still wish I hadn't eaten that much to this day) and my goodbyes we headed over to the airport. After check in I started feeling really sick and then the throwing up started.