I stole that photo from the world wide web, just so I'm upfront about it. Those are the colours from when I landed this morning, though! I don't have my camera cable . . . and, perhaps more importantly, the ability to take a photo of the outside of the plane I'm IN when it's landing.

That would be a good trick.

I mean, what a useless superpower, but neat.

Moving on - I guess I'm about three weeks behind on this thing! Truth be told, a lot did happen in Bangalore in the last three weeks, but the main thing being that I stopped feeling much like a traveller there and settled into a daily routine with work and . . . no, mostly work. Every day for the last few weeks was a struggle at IBM, but on Friday I left feeling pretty good about it. I will miss my team in India and their tendency, near the end, to rattle off a few sentences at me in Hindi before switching to English mid-sentence (at which point my face would go blank while my brain would race to catch up.) There were many small details and things that happened - I finally did that trip to Mysore to see the palace and the silk markets, I learned four new dishes, I even went to an ashram for a few meditations. (No state of enlightenment yet; I will keep you posted. I did love the building and the quiet and the sense of calm in the meditations - who knows? I may even keep it up at home.) Mostly I settled into life there, though, and while I could never live in Bangalore, I did learn to love it's weird blend of abrasive shouting, pollution and noise mixed with colour and laughter and unapologetic . . . Bangalorosity.

What, I can't make up words? Since when?

Ultimately in Bangalore I found something that's common to everything I've ever read about India - not matter how brash or shocking it can be, it is always honest about it. In the last book I read by Karan Bajaj, he says of Bangalore, "It is what it is. Don't like it? Change yourself."

I'm sure I will bore you all for months with Bangalore stories soon enough, and the nine thousand photos I have taken. Right now it's nice to have the time to sit and have a coffee and watch the planes land for a few hours before I get on the next one to Manila! I'll try and post some photos from the hotel tonight.

Love,

Gwen

p.s. Kuala Lumpur, the little bit I can see from the airport and from when we landed, is beautiful - Malaysia just got bumped higher on my travel list.