Our flight landed smoothly in Bangalore at 2 AM on Feb 25, into the thick, misty and steamy night of this South India metropolis, known as Indian Silicon Valley. As we rolled out of the airport, a queue of taxi drivers were waiting for passengers; it did not take long to spot the one with our name.
The ride from the airport to Le Meridien, the venue hotel , was bumpy and surprisingly trafficky for 3 AM. Our taciturn, but pleasant, English-speaking driver kept leaning on the siren at intersections to avoid accidents on the unlit road, laden with antiquated, overloaded trucks without lights or turning signals. At one point, at a speed of 110 km/hr it took an unexpected, sharp, right-to-left turn to avoid an unlit, stalled truck on the highway. As we looked through the back window of our driver’s diesel-engined Toyota van, we spotted the legs of the stalled truck’s driver sticking out of the engine compartment while his head and torso were buried under the hood in an attempt to re-start the truck.
After a 45-minute ride in a heavy industrial area with an occasional luxury business or residential building arising from the rubble around, we pulled into the driveway of our hotel where the heavily- armed guard stuck mirrors under the van, looking for explosives before letting us proceed to the lobby. A quick check with the front desk was enough to bring up some smiles on my and the Kwongs’ faces after finding out that a number of the NYSORA-Asia mission team in Bangalore has already check in.
