Relaxing in the Great City of Bangalore

I'm in Bangalore. It's great. I'm staying with a few friends. One is Mayoor. I met him in Bhutan when he was couch-surfing in Gedu with Professor Istvan, the Professor in question being the closest and pretty much only 'westerner' friend near my school in Pakshikha. One day he arrived with Istvan, clomping along the feeder track and, finding me well-disposed to the offering of tea to pilgrims, he tarried a while and we became friends. He stayed again on the way back from his travels, filled my hard-drive with some of the best films ever made and then kindly offered me his couch whenever it might come in handy. I took the offer very seriously and now here I am in Bangalore. 

The other guy is Arvind. His home seems to be a nexus of the international couch-surfing community and a social hub in the local area - a great place to hang out and find good conversation or sneak up to the roof terrace for a spot of reading or the figuring out of a song. In short, it's the perfect place to take a rest from the whizziness of India and find some inspiration. 

Next week I have a job interview for a position I'm really keen on. I need to get work starting in September so I can enjoy my own work and the travel, but this one is a really good one that excites me. Fingers crossed. Tomorrow I'll leave all my stuff here and travel light to Goa, where I could rent another bike and spend a few days exploring the coastline and the countryside. I'll be back here for the Holi festival - a nationwide technicolour snowball fight of bright powders. 

Having met two very amusing and seemingly talented music producers this afternoon, I may record a few tracks before I move on, just to bottle the songs that I wrote in Bhutan, and because its fun to go into studios, especially when it doesn't cost hundreds of pounds per day! This notion got me thinking about music a bit and I dug out some old recordings. 

Here's one... a live-ish version of By The River, and incidentally the one I remember my mother saying she liked the best. Apparently the song suited my singing. A convenient happenstance.