Bangalore City

Our last day in Bangalore and a touristy one. We took a hotel car and driver and were off to Labagh Botanical gardens, which were really beautiful and varied, with lovely trees, monkeys, a large lake, and some beautiful birds. We just wandered around for about an hour and still didn’t cover everything, but enough to give us a flavour.

Next the Bull Temple, where we were astonished to see as a centre piece of the Hindu temple a huge bull carved out of the black rock. We went in and round the aforementioned bull, carefully avoiding receiving any blessing from the priests or giving a donation for the temple…We nearly had some trouble when we tried to retrieve our shoes as we had no small change to tip their “carers”. The trees around the temple were laden with fruit bats.

Finally on the tourist trail Tipu Sultan’s Summer Palace which was fantastic, though smaller than it had been. It was well built and preserved. This man was an amazing ruler but no friend of the British and had fought fiercely against colonisers. It was his father Haider Ali who set up the Labagh gardens in 1750..

We decided to call in on St Andrew’s Church on the way to lunch, hoping we might find Prem there….and indeed he was so he took a bit of time to show us round in between appointments and I was able to play their famous pipe organ. It was a special moment for me as a Scot to be playing the Old Hundredth (All people that on earth do dwell) in St Andrew’s church (Presbyterian originally) in Bangalore. Prem was quite moved, singing along and regretted that I hadn’t been there for a Sunday as they don’t have many people who can play the organ well.

With a four hour overnight flight to Singapore we caught some sleep after lunch. Vijay and Sunita had invited us for a cup of tea to say farewell – needless to say there was a lot more than that – and a present for us as well. They have been so hospitable and it was good to say farewell properly before heading off to the airport.