A good way to spend a Saturday morning

Tom on a hill to the South of B.

Hoping both to understand more about the local geography, and to meet some other people, yesterday we joined the Bangalore Mountaineering Club on a day trip to the south of the city. We met the minibus at a local mall at 7.30 (it had been light for an hour so this was technically civilised), along with six other nice young men, and stopped for a breakfast of idly vada (steamed rice cake and lentil doughnut) and coffee on the way. I've very happily adapted to rice, chutney and sambar (spicy soup) for breakfast, especially accompanied by sweet milky coffee.

We stopped not far out of the city, and had a short but fairly steep walk up the hill, around boulders and informal quarrying sites, to a tiny Shiva temple at the top. Much to our dismay, having had to stop several times for admiring the view, and catching breath, there were several motorbikes which the locals had used to come for their morning worship. The temple looked much like the dry-stone shelters on the top of British hills, but with a standing stone rather than wet walkers in the centre.

I was surprised how much cooler the breeze seemed to be than in the city, although we'd probably only climbed a hundred metres, if that. The opposite hillside had very visible scars from mining, and reminded me a little of the side of Ingleborough, with open white gashes, and a well established rock road for the trucks to rumble down. After we'd had idlis again for lunch, we had a surprise dessert of mangos, enthusiastically lobbed across a small pond by some boys who were cheerfully sitting around at the other side. They were small but sweet, but I need a lot of practice to successfully suck out the juice without either getting too many of the fibres or smearing it across my face. On the way down I also snacked on some tamarind leaves - apparently good for energy - which were sweet and almost lemony.