First, all of the streets wind around on each other. There’s no grid. So navigating in Bangalore isn’t just a matter of heading in one direction until you hit your road, then taking that to your destination. No. You get to the main street, hopefully take that to your desired neighborhood, then take several side streets until you get where you’re going.
There are also tons of one-way streets and others where you can’t turn both ways onto them. In Hyde Park, they did that to keep Blacks out of the neighborhood (no joke). In Bangalore, it seems to be done for no particular reason. You counteract this by being able to U-turn anywhere you want, though.
With this crazy layout, though, you’ve really got no chance of knowing how to get around unless you’re a professional, so Sanju has to ask for directions. A lot. At best, this consists of pulling up next to a parked rickshaw and asking in Hindi for directions. These guys tend to know what they’re doing, but explaining things isn’t simple, and usually consists of a “go straight, then right.” Which means bupkes on these roads. So when that fails, Sanju goes to plan B, which is driving another 50m and asking whatever dude she can find on the side of the road. Again, this is either in Hindi or way too simple, so I can’t be of much help. When that fails in another 50m, the plan devolves into matching the speed of a rickshaw and asking for directions in moving traffic. Or waiving out the window and honking until the car next to us stops, thus totally blocking traffic to all but 2-wheelers.
Tonight, Sanju seemed to stumble on a way to get better directions, though. When we pulled up to some guys on the street, asking how to get to a particular road, one said “what landmarks are there?” Sanju knew of a cricket player’s house that was right near where we were heading, and upon that tip, the guy gave us dead-on directions. Maybe the way to go is to just navigate by proximity to cricket landmarks.
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