Monsoon Wedding - Part I

We arrived home in London at about midnight from our road trip to Provence. A quick check on the web for the current hand baggage allowances (at that time changing on a daily basis). Packing a borrowed sari and trying to imagine what else would be required for an Indian wedding in between trying to use BA’s excellent online check-in. Usually excellent but for some reason access was denied. I thought maybe it was due to heightened security and decided to focus on important clothes decisions instead.

We left for Heathrow at about 10am for our 2pm flight, not knowing how chaotic it would be. Again we couldn’t use the fast track terminals to check in so it was the horrendously long queue for us. When we finally got to the front about an hour and a half later the check-in guy said it was because the were doing a security check on the credit card we had booked on….but that he would make it up to us with an upgrade. Woohooo! Premium economy, not quite business but very nice all the same.

We walked out into the heat and dust at Bangalore at four in the morning, disoriented by the sudden chaos. Even at that hour of the morning the streets were teeming with bright yellow tuk-tuks, cars and bicycles, converging and diverging in front of us, seemingly controlled by some magnetic force.

We arrived at the Bangalore Club, a colonial compound of light blue buildings where most out of towners were staying. Nick, the Groom to be met us at this unsociable hour and his excitement was infectious. I don’t think Nick actually slept for the 3 days we were there – he was constantly hosting and organising, making sure everyone was ok. Sonali, Bride to be was also working behind the scenes making sure all the events (yes there were quite a few) were perfect. They had guests from all over the world from the US to Australia and many countries in between to coordinate so it was an impressive feat.

We checked into our room, the rather grand ‘Brigadier Hill Suite’ with rooftop terrace, two bathrooms, and as we discovered later a bed on the migration route of a colony of little furry black catapillers. It was a bit unnerving to wake up to find Steve with extra furry eyebrows on unexpected parts of his face each moring but we got used to it after a while.