Bangalore

Bangalore sits at almost 1000m and we felt this on our overnight train, it's the first time in a long while we've actually been cold. A beautiful day greeted us as our on-time train (an absolute miracle in India!) pulled into the main station. Again this is another city with not a great appeal for tourists other than a multitude of shops, malls and savvy restaurants. The main centre of Bangalore is not like India at all, it feels like you have been teleported back to Europe, and the prices in the shops reflected this also! Keeping things real we bedded down in the cheap / grotty Kings Cross equivilant area of town, home to at least 76 luggage shops and a similar amount of shoe shops. Our first day was spent getting our bearings of the city and on first impressions it looked like our shopping spree would be stopped dead in it's tracks, a real shortage of normal everyday shops - we aren't after the big brands at top notch prices!
We took the bull by the horns and ventured away from the beaten path to find our type of shops, unfortunately we did have to see the poverty stricken side of Bangalore. For all this is the Silicon Valley of India with the fancy office blocks and obvious wealth it doesn't look like its been distributed very fairly...
Our mission was a sucess as we found our favourite brand of shop 'Big Bizarre' an Indian house wife's one stop shop for all Geeta's household needs - once we got in the swing of things there was no stopping us and on our final day we went to town in the swanky area of Bangalore; a certain young lady purchasing a ridiculously priced Italian Leather Handbag from a fancy boutique!
We left Bangalore having gained an extra suitcase worth of goodies (yes the 2nd suitcase of our travels!) and boarded our flight heading back to Delhi - right on the border line for luggage weight allowance!