Bangalore Beat: Go on a Bangalore Walk

chillibreeze writer — KC Comal
(taken from our Expat Newsletter: Bangalore Breeze)

We are a family of fresh air fiends. In California the kids were outdoors for all but the unavoidable parts of their day. So the search for outdoor activities to do with kids in Bangalore has become something of a crusade for me. This Saturday we booked ourselves on Bangalore Walks, choosing an option that would introduce us to Lal Bagh and its trees, ending with breakfast at a Bangalore legend, MTR.

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We reach Lal Bagh around 6:40, and are surprised to find the place abuzz. There are men doing yoga as they faced the early morning sun, morning walkers and joggers, kids climbing trees and playing soccer and all looking as though they had been there for hours. We are to meet our guide, Vijay, at 7 am, so we walk up to the top of the rock that gently slopes up from one of the main entrances. It is a rock of the ages indeed, dating some 3 billion years, part of the mass of Gondwanaland that smashed into Asia raising the Himalayas. The kids beg to bend down and touch a piece of eternity, while I dubiously study the cloudy water trickling down the slope.

I spy a couple of men at the base standing with an expectant air and so we walk down to meet them. Vijay, our guide, is pleasant and enthusiastic amateur naturalist, who conducts these walks to share his love for Lal Bagh and its trees. Rattling off information that ranges from history to architecture and geology, he leads us on a meandering walk through the park, stopping to admire and marvel at some of the amazing specimens growing there.

Attack of the strangler fig!!!

Here, we wonder how a tree has grown parallel trunks when it does not grow aerial roots. There, we gape at a strangler fig that has completely enveloped a palm and is remorselessly choking it to a death of decay. The kids look uncertain at this example of nature’s brutality and I wonder how they will deal with a safari where animals come to more dramatic ends. A bit later, we recoil from a tree that the guide tells us casually is home to a nest of snakes.

The kids listening to Vijay point out flowers that bloom straight out of the trunk.

The three hours fly by and just as the sun becomes uncomfortably warm, the walk is wrapped up and we are shepherded to brekker. A short scramble across a wide and bustling street and we saunter past the crowds waiting for a table outside MTR, a café which has retained its old world charm. Up dank stairs and through steamy, narrow passages we are led into a cool private room.

The story is that when there was a shortage of rice during the Second World War, MTR invented an idli made from wheat. As its popularity grew, MTR became a local legend, with crowds lining up from dawn to eat breakfast there. Vijay wisely orders us half and quarter portions, so we can sample it all. Everything is as delicious as rumored, but I at least am uneasily aware of the ghee* drenching every thing on my plate. Did the three-hour stroll burn even a tenth of the calories we were wolfing down? Ah, c’est la vie, we had a wonderful morning and one we definitely plan on repeating. A cool morning, a park filled with trees, fragrant flowers, birds and even a bristling black and red centipede that stopped my son in his tracks…what more can you ask of a Saturday outing?

• Bangalore Walks can be reached at http://www.bangalorewalks.com
• MTR is on Lalbagh Road, close to the entrance of the park. If your nerves fail you, they do also sell packaged ready to eat meals and fixings available at most grocery stores in Bangalore.
• *Ghee is clarified butter, butter that has been heated slowly to separate the milk solids in it. It has characteristic nutty flavor.
  

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—About our writer:

"KC refuses to limit herself to one label. Among the many hats she wears are: Full time mom, part time writer, teacher, chef, art collector, gardener, quilter and extremely good vacationer. She has lived in Northern California for close to 20 years and has spent most of those years stopping frequently to smell the roses and plant some lavender. After two decades in Silicon Valley her husband will be working from Bangalore. KC has two children, a 12 year old daughter and an 8 year old son.