You want 23 cents for what????

So after walking a bit - we decide its time to see more of the city. What better way to get around than a 3-wheeled auto-rickshaw? And Jeff already had the driver picked out for us. This guy had approached us earlier - and spoke english very clearly - so Jeff theorized that anybody who is old and still driving a auto-rickshaw must be really good at it. That turned out to be good logic - b/c Noor was an excellent driver.

Wonder how much those cost? Try 10 rupees per hour....that's 23 cents per hour! I'm still in shock - and can't believe anything useful can cost 23 cents.





Subway...real good, real fresh.


We took a break from driving a bit - to grab a soda and a beer. So Noor pulled over and we went into some place that appeared to be a bar. 12 rupees for a 7-up (27 cents), and 70 rupees for a bottled beer ($1.62).



Here's a picture of a curbside fruit stand - we saw a lot of these in the city - but I was warned not to eat from them....they aren't clean enough for western travelers.

Then we drove by the Parliament building (that's what the Noor called it, but I later figured out it was called the Vidhana Soudha -- Bangalore's White House)-- we couldn't go in, and we didn't have a clue about its significance in Indian government. But its a big building, and its relatively attractive....so we took pictures.




Then we visited the Bangalore palace, a supposedly 1000 year old structure (that's what Noor said - found out later it was about 130 years old). The grounds were surrounded by dirt - and the entrance to the palace area had gates in front of it. As I approached it, a security guard came rushing up to me, blowing his whistle and yelling something at me. He's either giving me a warm friendly greeting, or he's saying something like get out of here or else I'm going to break your camera and shoot you. Probably the latter. So I pretended not to understand him (which is the truth) and took pictures anyways.



That really ticked him off. So we walked back to the auto-rickshaw and asked Noor to pose for more pictures in front of the palace -- to which he obliged.



This really made the guard angry and he came running over to the auto-scooter. The situation was getting a little iffy -- clearly we were doing something bad, but was it illegal. The driver explained to us that he was getting yelled at because we weren't going into the palace and only taking pictures outside(500 rupees). Now I'm GLAD we didn't go in.

But that security guy tainted my impression of India -- until then, I hadn't met a single mean person in Bangalore. Oh well.