Yesterday we awoke early in Bangalore to the hum and horns of the traffic outside and after getting ready our first stop was to the phone and internet poin to try and get in touch with another of Uncle John's friends - Siddarth. Unfortunately we could not contact him so we made our own way by rickshaw to the ISKCON temple in the north of the city.

The temple was a large, modern, glass structure and was very well organised, although also very commercialised. Throughout the one way route we were faced with many souvenir and food stalls. As the food looked goof we tried a mango milkshake and cabbage pakora (Mmm!), before returning to collect our shoes and bag.

Whilst we were at the temple Siddarth had called us and offered to provide a car to take us around the further attractions we wanted to visit. We took as rickshaw to the central railway station and were quickly met by our driver in a lovely, comfortable, air copnditioned car - luxury to us!

Our first stop was the Bull Temple, which we thought would be quite a sight, but it literally was a statue of a bull in an old temple building. Quite a bizarre experience! Following this we headed to the beautiful Lalbagh Botanical Gardens. The gardens were by far the best we had seen so far in India. We saw the band stand and glass building which is home to many flower shows and exhibitions, as well as some animals, including giraffes, which, unfortunately, were not real, but wire statues within the gardens. We also made the climb up a small hill to a shrine to catch the views over Bangalore, they were a little dissapointing to say the least!

Following this stop, we had completed our list of what we had wanted to see, so the driver took us through Cubbon Park and onto Siddarths office, where we were introduced. Siddarth Kindly had offered us a room at his hopme near the airport, which we gladly accepted, so after the brief meeting we left him, and returned to our hotel to check out.

Checking out sounds a lot easier than it was - we had paid upfront, however as we were leaving we wanted a refund for the second night - the hotel refused, but girl power and being argumentative worked well and we recieved all but 100 ruppees back!

The driver then took us slowly across the Bangalore traffic to Siddarths beautiful home. Set in gorgeous, gated grounds with and outdoor swimming pool, we were welcomed by his staff and shown to our massive rooms. We each had a double room, complete with en-suite and dressing room and plasma screens with Sky Tv!

As we had a while before meeting for dinner we took the time out to rest and be waited on hand and foot! We asked for coffee and were treated to this, alongwith biscuits, chocolate brownies (so gooey and gorgeous!) and chocolate doughnuts!

After pigging out for a while, watching My Family, Friends and Fawlty Towers, we showered and glammed up as much as we poor travellers could and headed to meet Siddarth and his colleague and sister at Sunnys Restaurant.

The restaurant was modern and bustling with a great, cosmopolitan atmosphere. We both ordered the Chicken stuffed with goats cheese and wrapped in prosciutto - our best meal yet! Laura followed this with a blueberry creme brulee and on the third attempt at ordering (they didnt have blueberry pie or tiramisu) Sarah had a blueberry cheesecake. Everything tasted better washed down with a couple of glasses of Rose!

After the meal we were taken to Pebbles, a bar/club/shack where we enjoyed cocktails before closing. Our car took us back to the house for just before 1am, we were ready to snuggle up in a nice warm bed as the evening had turned cool.

After just a few hours sleep we were up and ready to leave, with the same driver, for the train station at 6.45am. Luckily the morning traffic was not as bad as the previous day and we made it to the train station in plenty of time for our 8.15am train to Chennai. We spent the spare time buying food for the journey (Samosa for Laura and Aloo Dosa for Sarah), to go with our doughnuts what we had saved from Siddarths!

The train journey was comfortable and we arrived in Chennai just under an hour late. We took a 'dodgy' rickshaw to our hotel, although he tried to take us to another hotel first, a scam we have become only too aware off!

Talk about contradictions from the night before, although the hotel was clean and comfortable and had a tv it was nothing compared to the luxury at Siddarths!

We headed straight out to the tourist office to book a trip to Pondicherry, only to find it was fully booked (luckily we managed to book one through our hotel instead), before grabbing something too eat and an early night ready for our early start tomorrow.