Girls' Night Out in Bangalore

Friday was the last day of the training and consisted of mostly evaluations of the course and working groups to tease out some of what the participants learned throughout the week. In the evening, our collaborator from ISEC invited my boss and myself for a girls’ night out in Bangalore, which implied shopping and getting dinner in town. Of course, since my appetite for Indian shopping was whetted earlier in the week, I got very excited since there were still parts of Bangalore famous for good shopping that we haven’t explored. However, there was a mix-up with the car that was supposed to be sent for us, so my boss suggested another cultural experience for me…taking a three-wheeled open taxi (called auto?) into town. Well, let me just say that I didn’t think that I was going to live through that part of my life. Since Indians generally have a different idea of personal space than Westerners, it is also reflected in how close to each other they drive. Add to this Friday night rush-hour congestion, and you may begin to understand how scared out of my pants I was during the 45 minute ride into town.

However, once we got to Commercial street, famous for street shopping, my adrenaline kicked in, and I forgot all about the ride. It was sooo fun walking around, looking at all sorts of textiles, jewelry, and clothing items and realizing how cheap it all was (the place where we went shopping earlier in the week was more middle-class, hence more expensive). After satisfying our shopping crave a little bit, we went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. By the way, Chinese is becoming really popular in India; however, it comes with a certain spin (i.e. spicy), but still quite good. I also discovered one of my very favorite drinks…fresh lime soda: super delicious and incredibly thirst-quenching.

Even though we took the same three-wheeler back home, the adrenaline form shopping acted as a relaxant, so I wasn’t nervous and freaking out on the ride back to ISEC.