Back in a pickle

I arrived back in Bangalore this morning after a short, eight and a half hour flight from Heathrow. You get so used to hugging the west coast of India and then nipping over Pakistan and various other countries ending in "azakstan" that you forget that there are other routes. Flying to Britain last week (nine and a half hours as opposed to the usual eleven), I noticed that our pilot took us over the northernmost shoreline of the Black Sea, instead of the southern shore as usual. Returning yesterday, BA flew in virtually a straight line from Heathrow to Bangalore on a path that was as close to "as the crow flies" as, well, crows fly. The shortened journey, plus an aisle seat on the bulkhead (and nobody sitting to my right) probably made this my best flight to India ever. As an added bonus, there was even a documentary on the birth of Heavy Metal which showed some vintage clips of Black Sabbath from the late 60s and early 70s.

I ate a traditional BA English breakfast (button mushrooms, sausage, bacon, scrambled egg and tomato) and, after we'd landed at Bangalore fifteen minutes early, collected my bag and made contact with the driver who'd come to meet me.

So all in all, a thoroughly smooth and uneventful journey from England to India. The English breakfast though, and the previous week's breakfast quota of bread and marmalade will soon be distant memories. After a short, hour's nap at home, Ibia served up my breakfast Bangalore style: a cup of tea, three rotis and a jar of pickle; as much to say, welcome back to India, you can forget all that soft western food, get some chili down your neck.

Originally published on Blogger on 2nd April 2008.