First week in India (continued)

we flew to Brisbane, and waited five hours for our midnight Malaysian Airlines flight to KL

Ten hours later we arrived in Kualar Lumpur (KL), capital of Malaysia, at 6 in the morning. We were provided with a room at thee Concorde Hotel (a one hour drive through peak-hour traffic) to spend our 16 hour stopover.

A shower for all Bartonians and a couple of hours kip for Peter and Dani (Dani never sleeps on planes) and we then went down to the complimentary buffet lunch.

The boys were amazed and gluttonous. Malaysia is a mix of Malay, Indian and Chinese cultures and the cuisine is delicious, mouth watering and delightful. We all ate too much and still hadn’t tried a quarter of the possibilities.

The fountain of Belgian chocolate was pretty spectacular!! Flowing down over a series of heated metal domes, maybe a metre high in all, and then pumped back to the top. There were pieces of fruit and marshmallow on little sticks to hold under the warm chocolate flow and be coated. By the time the plate of delicacies had made it back to the table the chocolate was nearly set, so many lickable sticky fingers!

From our hotel room we could see the “Blue Mosque”, so after lunch we crossed the road to walk through the park to have a closer look.

We passed some bright red frangipanis

The dome of the Blue Mosque is covered in marble, with Arabic calligraphy around the base. We are told the minarets are the tallest in the world, and the dome of the mosque has the largest diameter of any mosque in the world.

KL was like Magnetic Island at the height of the wet season: 36ºC and very very humid. Our faces were quickly red and sweaty from our outing and after our walk we had the hotel pool to ourselves. We could hear, quite clearly, the muezzin giving the call to prayer being amplified out from the Blue Mosque.

After swimming we lay back on the hotel room bed and watched a Discovery Channel story about two biologists taking two hand-reared tiger cubs and training them to return to the wild.
We caught a bus back to KL airport, had time for a quick meal and then back on to plane for the 3½ hour flight to Bangalore, capital of Karnataka state, in India.

We had booked a hotel from Magnetic Island and had arranged a driver from the hotel to meet us at the airport. It was a relief to see a smiling face holding up a card with our name on it at 1 o’clock in the morning We squeezed ourselves and the luggage into his too small car and he took us to a different hotel to the one we had booked!

The concierge/manager assured us it was OK, the original hotel had arranged it, he said. “See,” he said, beaming enthusiastically, “We have your name here, no problem.” He showed me a check-in form with ‘Peter Jackson’ written on it; it said ‘Peter Jackson x 1’. “But there are five of us,” I said.
“What?!”
I held up my hand, all 5 fingers fanned out and his face fell and the smile seemed to fall into his lap!
“It’s alright! It’s alright! No problem sir!” he said, but with nowhere near his original enthusiasm.

It wasn’t long before we were all squeezed into a room with the furniture all shoved up against the walls and the 3 boys lying cross-ways on two single beds pushed together and Dani and Peter on a single mattress each on the floor. See: no problem!

After 5 hours sleep we went down to breakfast. The guava juice was delicious and very popular. There were many waiters constantly moving about to take care of every need. One waiter had the job of cooking, right in the restaurant, your eggs to order and your plain or French toast.

From the hotel room window the traffic kept the boys amused. From that distance it seemed mad but harmless. After our driver returned to pick us up and took us to the railway station we realized it was mad and terrifying.

We had booked and paid for our train tickets from Magnetic Island over the Internet but arrived at Bangalore station with plenty of time to pick up our tickets, expecting chaos and long queues. However our print out was sufficient and there were no crowds of people or queues and so we got to sit for an hour at the station. We were again reminded of the value of trying to stay free of expectations when traveling in India.

We caught the Shatabdi Express, from Bangalore, traveling 2nd class A.C. to Mysore. The seats have fold-down tables (like in an aircraft) and uniformed rail staff provided a steady stream of hot food and drinks. The boys got to see the cattle, goats, sheep, dogs etc as we sped across the high plain.

At Mysore station Dani phoned Murthy, who had arranged our accommodation. We took a taxi ride to the yoga Shala where we were (eventually) met by Murthy’s assistant (also called Murthy) who ferried us all to our new home for a month.

#735, 12 Cross, Gokulam 3rd Stage, is our address. A 2 bedroom single storey ‘bungalow’ with a rooftop courtyard. There is no yard or garden but we have a kitchen, bathroom with shower, European loo (plus an Indian loo), dining room and one other room that has a spare bed if you want to visit (Gazza).

The boys are sharing two single beds again, but have had no complaints.

The house has ceiling fans, electricity and (mostly) running water, so it is the lap of luxury really. The kitchen has an electric fridge, gas stove and small electric oven. There is even hot water if you remember to turn it on in time. It took us a while to work out the plumbing, but finally found that last elusive lever that meant that most of the taps have water coming from them most of the time (and mostly when turned on, rather than off).

There is a lot of construction going on in this area. All residential, either new buildings or renovations. Right next door is a new house going up. There is constant noise, but it is all hand tools, no howling machinery whining away. Two doors up and across the road is a man in his 50’s or 60’s (I guess) who sits all day with a hammer and mason’s chisel belting lumps of rock into shape for others to lay down into a courtyard path.
Each new house construction site has a family of builders resident. I don’t know if it is for security or part of the deal for the builders. The house next door has a small baby living there who we often hear at night and early in the morning. The women take part in the building process too.

There is street cricket (or ‘gully cricket’, as they call it here) with the boys down the road too.