Final installment: Bannerghata National Park, a walking tour, and Afghan Restaurants

Well, I've been home for a while now. It's getting time to at least write the next installment of the blog if not finish it.
First a correction on Stanley: We got the bill in 3 installments. I had only seen 2 at the time I wrote the last entry. The last one was pretty big (lots more than I would have expected for a driverless car rental in the US, but then we had a driver in India. It also explains some of the questions from the previous entry. We got a daily package of so many hours and so many kilometers. If we exceeded that amount we paid extra per hour or km. I think we were charged standby time for the entire day when we only actually drove for a partial day. For days when we took long trips we had extra hours and extra km. So that's the answer. No worries...we always figure that in an unfamiliar place we can simply expect not to understand the details of everything that happens to us, and that we just have to accept that lack of knowledge and control.
The weekend after Ellen left, Doug, Verell, and I decided to go to the Bannerghata National Park. In addition, I was really happy that Nil came with us. Nil is a man that I got to know when he was spending several months in Nashua, and who (along with Prashanth) helped set up my trip. The BNP is not what you think of in the US as a National Park. More like a zoo/wildlife park. It's 20-some KM outside of B'lore, so Stanley took us. When we reached BNP, it was a considerably different experience than any previous on this trip. There are lots of beggers, I think all women) who swarmed around us, and they were relatively aggressive. Nothing that seemed very fearsome, but they would tug my sleeve and make motions to their mouths (wanting food). They did not give up and go away either. Ellen had given a few isolated beggers a small coin on some previous trips and they would immediately leave. In this case, there were too many so we just forged ahead. They followed us until we got inside the gates of the park. It was very hard to do knowing how well off we all are and how poor they are. I don't know that I will ever get used to that. I hope I don't get hardened to it. I'd rather feel uncomfortable than not remember how incredibly luck I am and how important it is to share my luck.
After getting our tickets we got in a line and from there on a bus for a tour of the "wildlife park" part of BNP. The busses had windows that were covered with heavy welded screens and with a few 6-inch holes in it. We found out why later. As we got near the front of the loading line, they moved us ahead of a few parties and we were the last group on the bus. They put me up front with the driver, Doug and Verell behind me, and Nil across the isle from them. They drove us around through a wild-seeming area, but every once in a while we would go through an "airlock" made of double fences opened and closed by at least two people. These fences separated different groups of species in the park.
We discovered why the westerners were put up front when we saw our first animals (Spotted Deer) and the driver insisted on taking our cameras and taking pictures of the animals for us (they were on his side). This happened for most of the animals. I actually prevailed on him to take a picture of me with lion in the background.
This whole trip bus trip was really pretty good; among many other things we saw lions, tigers, a white tiger, spotted deer, zebras, leopards, etc. At the end, the driver and his assistant got a big tip from me, and I think the others. Naturally this was why we were put up front, but I was ok with that!
Back from the bus ride, we saw quite a lot of random interesting animals, plus a pen of elephants. The keepers brought some of them out of the pen and were encouraging us to touch them. I was not going to get anywhere near those huge things, but Verell did let the elephant wallah have the elephant reach out his trunk to V's hand. Apparently being touched on the head by an elephant is good luck, so the elephant wallahs are accustomed to getting the critters to reach out with their trunks.
We returned, and went to a department store with Verell to get some shoes (his had failed in some way). Then back to drop me off at my apartment and Nil, Doug and Verell continued on with Stanley. That was my last ride with Stanley, so we said goodbye.
That evening, I went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant in the Sheraton...a really nice place. I went with my Nashua friend Chuck and his co-worker Jayesh. Chuck had arrived from Nashua on Friday; Jayesh had also arrived recently from Mumbai.
I was pleased to have a lot of chances to spend time with Chuck and Jayesh, and later their co-worker Bharat.(*) I have known Chuck for 15 or 20 years and I really enjoyed being with Bharat and Jayesh as well. We had hours of interesting conversations with them. Doug and I met them for lunch near my apartment the next day, and then the next weekend after Doug had left, Lenny and I met them again for dinner. I had dinner with Chuck last year when I was in India along with 3 other VMS engineers. I joked that it seems to be a rite of passage for VMS Engineers coming to India to meet Chuck.
The two dinners were at two different Afghan Restaurants. First was the Royal Afghan at the Sheraton; the other was Samarkand (which had a Ghengis Khan theme and is located on Infantry Road). One allegedly has the best lamb in the world and the other has the second best, so we had to do our own comparison. I think the Royal Afghan (which was rated number 2 by Gary, another co-worker of Chuck that I also used to work with) was actually the best.
The Royal Afghan is outside near the pool. That made it quieter and nicer in may ways as long as it was not raining. OTOH, Sammarkind was in an unassuming (you might even say run down) shopping center, but once you got in it was pretty amazing. The walls are fake rock. It seems like being in a (large) cave. We joked about it seeming like Tora Bora and how we had heard Afghanistan was turning the cave area into an amusement park (seriously!) but did not know they were moving it to India, etc. etc. Anyway, the whole time was a lot of fun and a lot of good company and interesting food too.
The final outing with Chuck was a walking tour with a company called "Bangalore Walks". The tour went the length of M.G. Road starting from a church at the far end from my apartment and walking back about 2km pointing out lots of interesting things like where winston Churchill's bungalow was when he was an officer in the British Army in India.
One final thing of interest: On Monday night, I walked out from my apartment to get an ice cream at a shop that I frequented. I was walking back along a sort of darkish road and a car pulled up beside me and the window opened. I was imagining someone asking me for directions (which seemed pretty weird). However, it turned out to be Chuck and Jayesh...they had been to Rotary, and it turns out that the Rotary club meets right around the corner from my apartment.
Unless I think of anything else pithy to say, this is going to be the final installment of my India travel blog. Thanks for "listening" and I hope you enjoyed it.
(*)Well, this "co-worker" thing seems a bit weird, but I did not want to distract. In fact, Chuck is the CTO, Jayesh the CFO and Bharat the CEO of a Bangalore-based company. However, Chuck lives in Nashua, Jayesh in Mumbai, and Bharat somewhere in the US.