OK OK OK, I know I am super behind on these posts! That inertia gets real after several days!

SO, let’s get right to it.

After our wonderful dinner I managed to sleep a bit more, until around 6:30AM. Natasha was not going to miss another French class as she overslept the day before, and I also blame myself for not waking her up!

I had not spoken to Mohamed about booking him for the day. In many ways I thought that I would just be hanging around, perhaps catching up on this travelog, perhaps tightening up my syllabus and getting that taken care of as well.

As I spoke to my aunt the night before, as well as my Dad, they suggested that I reach out to Mohamed to have him take me around the city one more day, perhaps seeing the things that we missed the day before. Also, the BLR traffic is CRAZY, so it is easy to lose so much time in the day.

Fearing that Mohamed would be tied up if I did not reach out quickly, I called him at 6:30AM before getting into my Y&M for the day. Definitely woke him up. Felt terrible. He told me he was free for the day. I asked him to get some sleep and call me when he woke up.

He kept saying it was no problem and that this was his normal time to wake up. I said that is fine, but I needed him to get some sleep because I felt so bad!

He told me he would get back to sleep and that I should think of the things that I wanted us to do for the day so that we could figure out timing.

Perfect, I thought.

As he dozed off, I thought the following:

1. MTR for breakfast. And for ONE dosa, not two.
2. Cubbon Park?
3. Air and Space Museum?
4. State Library?
5. General Assembly of legislature?
6. High Court?
7. Maybe that would be it?

So, the list was relatively extensive.

I sent these ideas to Mohamed and he said his usual, “no problem sir”.

Perfect, I thought.

He said he would be over at around 9:30AM so that we could get to MTR and begin our day.

I Y&M’d, got cleaned up, and he scooped me up with a smile on his face and we made our way to MTR.

We were much more diligent about our eating, today.

I only ordered one masala dosa and rava idli (idli with some veggies and nuts in them) and he ordered one plain dosa. In retrospect I should have done the same, but the masala dosas were just toooo good to not procure.

We finished our meal with whole coffees (to be addressed later), and then made our way out the door and on our day’s journey.

The first stop of the day was at The Palace of Tippu Sultan. If you were an Indian citizen it was 30Rs to enter, if foreigner, 500Rs. Talk about a mark up. Although Mohamed tried to swindle me in for a lesser price, we ended up paying the 530Rs and made our way in.

As it turns out, dude was an incredible visionary from the 1600s. He was the king of Mysore (region), and he was all about the people and bettering the conditions of the people. Naturally, he was against the British and all of their colonial plundering.

He helped stave off British incursions and was able to expel them from certain regions. He even had this piece of artwork depicting a tiger mauling a British soldier. I guess when you hate, you hate. ‘

The palace was really neat and open air. Which was interesting as it would be fairly warm outside but cool inside. The gardens were also lavishly decorated and provided a wonderful backdrop. As we were walking inside I was wondering how the palace would have been decorated and where this dude would have slept. He was not there very often, so I’m guessing it just remained empty and taken care of while he was gone. Interestingy enough there was a school located next door. You would hear the children laughing and playing volleyball.

From the Palace we made our way through Cubbon Park. BLR is so green and the city makes an effort to maintain the greenery. The two major parks are beautiful and do an excellent job showcasing various forms of plant and tree life. We took a quick drive through the park. It was really beautiful with trees arching over the roadway providing the perfect shade for walkers and motorists alike.

Meandering through the park took us to the Seshadri Iyer Memorial Hall/State Central Library Bengaluru– the state library!

Y’all know me and my affinity for libraries and all of the knowledges contained therein.

We made our way in and I illegally took a couple of photos…shhhhh.

Really beautiful building architecturally. You walked in the main hall and the circular shape was two floors. You had numerouspeople sitting and leafing through books and working. Still others were moving around between the circles of books, peering into various texts to see if it was the information they needed or found interesting (conjecturing to the max here).

It was really interesting the number of books per section, as well as the variety in texts. There were whole sections of history, even Marxist texts ranging in publication from 1978 to 2017. Really neat stuff. I could have spent hours in this place.

We left the library and made our way over to the General Assembly where various laws were passed particular to this region of India. Mohamed was telling me that, three years previous, one of these individuals got elected to power, subsequently did some illegal things, and then was taken right next door to the high court for prosecution. He didn’t have to go far!

From here, Mohamed needed to pray so he went to a nearby mosque and I found a spot to have some tea. Probably a bad idea. With the full coffee and this tea, I was SUPER jittery as I was over caffeinated. Also the glass was so hot I spilled some. I just kept chugging my water as we continued around.

The next stop was the Air and Space/Science Museum, which was probably more designed for kids. Lots of touchable touchables and things for kids to do. Still nice to walk through, however.

There were a couple of art galleries next door that we also checked out. Some cool pieces dating back some years (like 200BC) including arrow heads and pots.

We got wrapped up here and it was already evening hours so our time together for the day was wrapped up. He took me back to Natasha’s at around 5:0OPM. After we said goodbye, I needed to Y&M again so that I could get rid of all the caffeine and feel relatively normal! I did a rather intense one and came out feeling refreshed.

Natasha was really digging into her GMAT studying, and since we had been out the previous two nights, we ordered in and enjoyed some lovelyconversation about all things pop culture and comparing Netflix media selections between India and the US. We cleaned up and I got to bed at around 10:30/11:00PM in preparation for my last day in BLR.