My alarm starts to ring, it’s 5:00 am on a Sunday morning; it’s still dark outside and my head feels groggy initially, but soon settles on a single line of thought, that I have to get a head start on the To Do list for the morning so as to make it out of the house by 6:30am as planned. We have a flight to catch🙃. I peel away the warm duvet and start with the work; leftover dishes to wash from yesterday, finish the packing, make and have tea, place the waste bin outside for collection, get dressed, book cab and off we go!

Things went exactly as planned🤞. The Ola cab soon arrived, picked us up and we were off to the airport. The Bangalore airport is one of my favourite destinations in the city! Sunday and early morning translates to nil traffic on the city roads; we cruise along the Outer ring road and are soon speeding on the 26 km flyover from Hebbal to the airport. We reached the airport in an hour flat! That’s good time starting from Sarjapur🚗💨.

The airport is incessantly a hub of activity, people and cars, staff and passengers, security and civilians, food and fashion! At the Bangalore airport you are always greeted with a cold breeze, the intensity varying with the season and time of day. Soon we join the queue to enter the Departure gates; to increase the length of the queue and to keep people moving, an elaborate zig zag shaped formation is created at the entrance. There is a sense of urgency; after giving off the check-in bags and clearing the security, finally I am engulfed in a sense of calm and secret joy; there are no more hurdles to clear😅! Now for some breakfast 🍲

It’s the choice of food joints both inside and outside the airport that makes the place so enjoyable. Frequent flyers may dismiss the airport simply as a gateway, but I like to think of the Bangalore airport as a destination in itself. You can sit back and enjoy a good relaxing meal before boarding the flight. Or if you are arriving here, you can have food outside in one of the many cafes around and then head home. Inside the Bangalore airport, it’s the Tiffin Centre that’s a favourite for breakfast. Mysore Masala Dosa and Vada are our preferred dishes; idli and uppma are also popular.

While waiting in the queue to order food; I eavesdrop on a conversation of a fellow passenger. Standing in queue behind me, he was talking on phone; he had to pay almost Rs.2000/-+ in excess baggage, one consolation was that a lady passenger in front at the check-in counter had to pay Rs. 9000/-+ in excess baggage. In his defense he said that he was just arriving from a international destination and the first carrier, Emirates, which had a higher baggage allowance. As a result he got a reduction from the original said amount of Rs. 3000/- plus.

“15 min wait for the Mysore Masala dosa” informed the lady at the billing counter at Tiffin Centre, diverting my attention back to food.

“No problems.” I replied. We had time and the cook in the open kitchen behind the counter was dishing out a Masala Dosa every five minutes. The fifteen minutes was exaggerated to be on the safe side, at his rate, we will definitely get our dosas quicker 😋

The Mysore Masala dosa arrived hot, plated horizontally on a circular plate lined with a cut out green banana leaf; the dosa was long, wrapped like a log with the mildly spiced potato filling inside, accompanied by a bowl of sambar and two bowls of chutney- red and white. The dosa was cooked crisp on the outside and soft underneath, so that you can gently tear away a generous piece, dunk it into the sambar and savour😋. I don’t like mixing the sambar with the chutney; and most of the time, the chutney is served cold, so I prefer just the steaming sambar for my dosa. The Vadas (three in a plate) were fried to crispy light brown perfection on the outside and soft white and mildly spiced on the inside, also served with an accompaniment of sambar and chutney.

With filled stomachs and happy at the prospect of travel, we saunter to the boarding gate. A half an hour wait before we commence boarding.

☁︎☁︎☁︎

It was a short trip and we arrived back at the Bangalore airport on Tuesday afternoon. After collecting our bags, the immediate thought on our mind was lunch🍽. This time, we chose the eatery outside the airport building called Windmills. The afternoon was warm, breezy and we were unhurried.

We ordered the Linguine with asparagus and the Buttermilk Chicken Burger 👇

Both the dishes were good and filling. The place is known for their beer, but we skipped. Next, a cab ride back home! Happy to be home; but where did we go !? Kochi, Kerala😀. More on that in the next post.

Take care !