Lion + Shore temple, Mahabalipuram

Last weekend

Bengali sweets, from a dinner guest who'll be invited back!

Despite the relatively short distance (300km or so) I flew. Although the heat of May had subsided in B, I was expecting humidity. And blue sky.

Circling the airport, we took a loop out over the ocean, a neat pattern of tankers either resting or like us waiting for further instructions. Smaller fishing boats made a bright mosaic on the beach. A striking number of blue rooves and warehouses I haven't noticed elsewhere studded the city as we came back round.

The drive from the airport was grimly familiar from other cities - roads narrowed by work on their own expansion and ugly concrete flyovers under construction, but not yet reducing the pressure of traffic (although at one, a neat wicket of green - looked like astroturf - in the nook beneath the rise provided a space for two boys practicing their cricket).

Towards the ocean, down a medium size street - part retail part domestic - we passed a wedding party, with an arch with the couple's names which has become familiar (my favourites always those made with hundreds of gerberas and other flowers).

This one was more cheerfully signposted by a band with drums and the groom (looking mildly overwhelmed) on an even more bewildered looking horse. Jains said the taxi driver. Horse, music, clothes. Jains are rich. Gold business, diamond business...

Then we reached the coast - some of the most affected by the 2004 tsunami. Marina Beach, 13km of lovely golden sand, had about 200 recorded casualties, mostly children. Still there are blocks of concrete council-style square blocks - weathered but unbroken. Perhaps more recent. And endless fishstalls, the proprietors of smaller ones carefully holding umbrellas over handfuls of prawns or little fish.

Skipping the temples without much hesitation (heading south for more) I was sad to miss the originally Portuguese San Thome Cathedral, with the tomb of St Thomas the Apostle who is said to have brought Christianity to India in the first century.

The roads and shops in Tamil Nadu are singularly absent in English signs and writing (even more true of Hindi) - the easiest protest for Southern identity against a government 2000+km and arguably a whole culture away.

The local politicians though, are very much in evidence...

Mmm... litchi season

IPL T20 5

Chinnaswamy

The Chinnaswamy Stadium, home of the Royal Challengers Bangalore, is a short walk from our house. In cheerful echoes of our last flat, close to the Oval, we can occassionally hear the crowds (or music, or fireworks...). We've also taken the opportunity to go to several matches over the last few weeks. My evenings at home, with away matches on the tv, have often been punctuated by shrieks of delight, and texting my brother to compare notes on run rates and which batsman needs to sort himself out and start running.

The Indian Premier League's fifth season is just coming to a close. Much hyped, the league has more or less successfully survived complaints about the format (twenty20 as opposed to test cricket), disrupting the international schedule and elevating cricket players to the same overpaid celebrity as the premier league at home. To say nothing of the second season's swift relocation to South Africa following security concerns about the Indian general election.

Our local team, much to my disgust, lost their chance to go to the playoffs by losing abysmally to the Deccan Chargers, who had spent much of the short season languishing at the bottom of the table.

Tonight another south Indian team, the Chennai Super Kings, take on the Kolkata Knight Riders in the final. My allegiances are torn, as CSK took 'our' slot (albeit which we failed to claim). I'm quite sad about the gaps in TV scheduling it will leave, although watching the England team take on the West Indies may help in the short term.

Then in the autumn England will be touring here... fingers crossed for a match in Bangalore!

A real fan.

** With thanks to Thomas for technical advice, support and explanation. A short guide to cricket available on request; pre-tested on several Americans.

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.

Houseboat