Shopping is an Experience!

After breakfast, I met an American couple from NY, one who is working at the Goldman Sachs Bangalore office and her partner was just tagging along. They are staying in the same apartment complex that I am in and have been in Bangalore for one month now and they are in love with the whole city. They took me along on a mini tour of Koramangala (the locality we are staying at) and MG Road/Brigade Rd. (main drag for shopping, eating, pubs, etc). I was very impressed with the quality and price of clothes whether it was western or traditional sarees/salwar kameez. $$$$ here can go a very long way. I must say that I am now excited to find my own place and start decorating it. We walked into a few home stores and found beautiful glass tables for $50, decoration pieces for $4-$20, silk curtains/sarees for $10+.

You can even get pure pashmina embroidered shawls with beautiful intricate designs from Kashmir for around $150. The pashmina embroidered shawls take a month to create and each has a unique design. You can't really find these in the states. Plus, the whole shopping experience for pashmina shawls can be quite an experience. We were in the store for an hour and the sales guy bought us tea and told us stories. By the end of the sale we already knew how many generations of his family that have been running this store, who makes the embroidered shawls (says its a 75 year old man), and we learned that there are no elephants in Kashmir even though he sold many elephant statues in his Kashmir store. India can be quite strange.

After that ordeal, the ladies took me to a Coorg restaurant called Coconut Grove. Coorg is a another city in the state of Karnataka. Every meal I have had so far is a memorable experience. I had this dish that was spicy fish tamarind & coconut-based sauce with yummy coconut peppered rice. Oh my GAWD! I am in food heaven! I thought I would miss the ethnic diversity in Los Angeles!