Bengaluru?

"Ahh, a good woman with strong muscles!" I could hear a voice behind me say as I heaved my pack on to the upper berth. I turned around and was met with a mirthful grin from an Indian gentleman. I laughed, and climbed up after my pack, read for a few minutes, and fell asleep (three nights in a row of no more than five hours sleep had caught up with me).

I woke up sometime later, groggy, and was greeted with, "You can't sleep the whole day away! You should be looking out the window and seeing the country. You can sleep when you get back to wherever you are from! You missed the hill station. Beautiful! 2000m, where all the British and now the wealthy people from Bombay have weekend houses." It was the same man, still with a friendly smile. I explained the jetlag and clambered down. He pointed out my daytime seat. It was a sleeper car, so there are a variety of configurations of benches that fold in to seats or sleeper berths, depending on the time of day. Our seats were next to the window, facing each other. My new friend turned out to be Dinker, who was on his way to Bangalore to cheer on the Indian cricket team in their match against Britain. He's lived in London for 40ish years, but still roots for India. His son and daughter are about my age, both doctors. We chatted away most of the afternoon, while enjoying the view from our window, getting to know the other passengers traveling near us, and tasting treats from on-board vendors and those at the stations. Dinker made sure I got off whenever the train stopped for a few minutes to stretch and walk ("Exercise and circulation are important! We aren't getting enough sitting on this train all day!").

(I'll interrupt the story here to say that normally when I fly, people look at me little strangely: before the flight I like to do some yoga poses and I'm always sitting cross-legged wherever I go. Let's just say that I wasn't the only person doing stretches on the platform and plenty of men and women of all ages sit cross-legged here.)

As the train slowed at one stop, he pointed out the window and asked if I had tried a certain fruit piled high at the fruit stall. I hadn't, so we hurried off the train to buy a sack-- and carefully wash it-- before the train pulled out again. The fruit was "bor". It is about the size and shape of a roma tomato, but not as red (more similar in color to winter tomatoes, if you have seen those). The texture and taste of the flesh remind me of a pear, but perhaps a bit spicier. They are small, so we each ate several and then started offering them to the other passengers we had befriended.

We had a number of children in our carraige. Three of them (two girls age five, one boy age two) kept stopping by to talk and play and climb like monkeys all over the bars. Shortly before dinner was delivered (veg thali and chapatis), I was singing "the hokey pokey", "head shoulders knees and toes", and "if you're happy and you know it" with them. Not only do these kids speak English, they know our songs too! This morning they asked me to play "stone paper scissors" with them. One of the girls played scissors on every single round.

Dinker kept teasing the children. They would ask where he was going and he would reply "Bengaluru!" They would laugh and scream and say "But this train goes to Bangalore!" The joke is that the two names are, in fact, for the same city. Many places in India have two names, a colonial name and a "new" name (that is usually the original name). I believe Bangalore changed names in 2006. Mumbai (formerly and often still known as Bombay) is another example.

I used an Indian toilet for the first time-- while on the moving train! An Indian toilet is squatting toilet, basically a hole with a place on either side for your feet. It's like being out in the woods, except with more wobbling as the train zips down the tracks.

The train ride went so quickly, I probably only spent a half hour or so reading. I slept well, for almost ten hours! (Even with an afternoon cup of chai from the chai-wallah that circulates up and down the train.) All in all, a great experience!

Even from the train, it is apparent that Bengaluru is a different sort of Indian city. Many of the same shanty structures around the outside of trash, plenty of laundry hung out to dry, cows and goats, and heaps of trash, but there's an addition: giant billboards for electronics and technology companies (including Google). Bangalore is not only India's modern IT hub, but it has a history of technological advancement as well. It was the first city in India with electric street lights!

I checked my bag at the cloak room and grabbed an autorickshaw over to Lalbagh Botanical Garden (Giulia, Rachelle, Mark, Jeff-- you would have loved it!). Almost all of the trees had labels with scientific names, common names, and place of origin. I saw lots of familiar species (varieties of palms and ficus, two mango trees, and a bunch of poincianas). Unfortunately, the cacti house was padlocked shut. Two of my favorites were the tamarind tree and the Bombax. The tamarind tree was covered in dangling pods. I used to buy them at the grocery store in Phoenix; inside the pods are big smooth seeds covered a tart pulp, almost like a fruit rollup in consistency. You could suck on them and eventually the pulp would melt in your mouth. The Bombax tree was enormous. (There are pictures.) You might know it by its other names: Silk Cotton or Kapok tree. Their gray bark wrinkles around the base of each branch, making it look rather like an elephant's trunk.

I am here visiting Catherine, a friend I met while hiking in New Hampshire (see the blog post from June). In a true "it's a small world" story, my friend Kathleen and I met Catherine and her father Chuck while we were all hiking in the White Mountains. They live in New Hampshire, but Chuck runs an IT company based here in Bangalore, and Catherine is studying in a really cool international studies program. She spent her freshman year of college in Costa Rica and is spending this year here in Bangalore.