Jogging in Bangalore

At 3:30 AM on the 19th, I suddenly woke up. Jet lag sucks. There was nothing great on TV, and I hate watching it anyhow. I know I cannot sleep now. This is anyhow better than waking up in the middle of the night. I watch some crap on the TV for an hour and just shut my eyes. I stay groggy till about 5:30, but I am definitely not sleepy after that. I finish off my ablutions, and decide to go out. I usually like jogging, but some friends had advised that street dogs and road conditions in the “third world country” are not conducive to outside activities. I gaze out into the street through my balcony, and see several folks walking in sneakers. I decide to take my chances; at the very worst, I will have to take a rabies shot; my insurance would hopefully cover it. Mp3 player ready, stopwatch, driving license, dad’s visiting card, and 50 rupees in a plastic cover. I head out. There were a couple of dogs at the first junction; I got apprehensive but continued to step forward. They did not even look at me; guess they had better things to do. The weather was pleasant and there was little traffic. But the little traffic was definitely very rude. There were a couple of stray puppies crossing the road and this dude in a car was honking his butt off. It is 6:00 AM asshole; have some sense and drive around the dog. Buses would fly down the road like it was a runway. On the whole it was not too bad, but driving sense is biased against the pedestrian. Also, the roads were OK, there were nice stretches with footpaths. But at some points along the way, there were huge potholes, really huge potholes. With the driving sentiment, and some of the potholes, you had to be a little more conscious about your surroundings than in the USA. But it was not very difficult.

I reached office at around 10:30 AM. An agent met with me at 1:00 PM, and we saw some apartments. He drove me around on his Hero Honda splendor motorcycle. He knew broken English, some Telugu and Hindi, so we could communicate. The person Santosh was very punctual; in fact everyone whom we met on the way was particular about time.