A little adventure...

So, I’ll start this one off with a little adventure I had the other day. My office itself is about a 25 minute walk from my apartment, and I as wrote in the first post, I really like walking to random places, seeing different stores, dhabas, parks, buildings, PEOPLE, etc. But this was a walking adventure taken to the limit!

Part of my first project for work heavily involves something called ‘valuation’ in finance. Why is this at all relevant? (I actually tried explaining why it is relevant, but realized it was putting me to sleep, as I’m writing this..) Anyways, long story short: there’s a lot of grunt work involved in a certain part of my project so I’m working with this other firm, on the other side of the city, to speed up the process.

I left my office at noon time on Wednesday last week, with 70 rupees in my wallet (About 1.50 dollars). I hadn’t gotten paid yet, and I’ve been converting whatever dollars I have for sustenance (aka Subway). I was running incredibly short on time, and didn’t want to arrive late and look bad, so I didn’t think to stop by the foreign exchange place close to my work before leaving. The auto ride to the other firm was 47 rupees leaving me with 23 rupees in my pocket. The other firm’s also in a busy part of the city, so I figured that there had to be a forex place that I could use after work, to get enough dough to get home. Boy was I wrong. I conveniently forgot about finding a Forex place because I was just plain tired/distracted with work all day. Everyone left at around 8, and we all had great laughs leaving the building. Happy times. Good moods. I pulled out my phone, threw on some tunes, and walked to where I could find an auto. I pulled out my wallet, and there I saw a crumpled 20 rupee note, and a few coins. Ish mang. It would be at least 75 rupees by auto, and I wasn’t familiar with buses in this part of the city.

This is where something beautiful happened. I had borrowed my sister’s Blackberry before I came to India because she couldn’t stand that it was a touchscreen, and I thought it’d be useful to have a phone with international email capabilities. I opened up Google Maps, to try to figure out where I was. I knew it had a GPS feature, but it could only ever tell me my location within a 1000 meter radius, which is not too useful.

Not this time. I saw a tiny flashing blue light that I had never seen before. I walked to the end of the street, and rechecked my phone. The little blue light that could had moved with me. For you long-time sassy Iphone and Blackberry veterans, this is commonplace. But man, being in India, on tiny roads, and having outstanding GPS service is just baller. I swear this is not an ad, haha.

Honestly, though, had I been so desperate, I’m sure I would’ve found some alternative to walking. But it’s good fun. So, I quickly mapped out a route looking at the map. I saw that I would be going on some really tiny roads, and given that it was about 8:30 and dark, I thought twice. But man, the opportunity was too good. All I ever really get to see in Bangalore, is main roads, malls, fancy stores, blah blah blah. Tourist attractions are tourist attractions.

Checking the map, and my position every so often, I started walking, going on smaller and smaller roads. Small temples, hole-in-the wall stores selling everything from shoes to jewelry, pani-puri carts, people chilling on stoops, small construction projects, COWS, huge rocks, and tiny restaurants lined the streets. One of the most interesting things is seeing tiny stores that are attached to people’s houses. Wake up in the morning, take a bath, grab a bite, open a door and you’re at work. There’s tons of places like that. The place is alive, and it’s not the Bangalore you see on Google images. I’m not attempting to romanticize anything. But do you really want to read about the same, trite descriptions of poverty? There are serious problems and they need to be addressed, but there’s no insight I can or will add on this platform.

Anyways, in the middle of all the interesting sights and smells that I was enjoying, I unceremoniously stepped in a huge pile of *****. Haha, no, it wasn’t actually any animal excrement. I mistakenly walked into a construction site, where there apparently was still a ton of wet mud. Effed up my shoe mang. A sign perhaps? Who cares, that’s why you buy cheap shoes, haha.

Door to door, it was about 2 hours. I got back, exhausted, at around 10:30, and just passed out. I’ve gone to the other office twice more, and actually had the presence of mind to get some dollars converted. But, I’ve walked home both times. I’ve posted some pictures. Not the highest quality, though, my apologies. Hope y’all are having good summers. Hit me up, I’d love to know what you’re doing.