Southern India

I guess it should not have surprised me that Bangalore is entirely different from everywhere that I have been in Northern India. But somehow, it has.

I wrote in a previously post about how China should be thought of more like Europe than the US because the differences among provinces in China are of similar magnitude to the differences among European countries than that of US states. I also recently read an article discussing how Europe has been vastly over-emphasized by Western society and should be thought of as a sub-continent along the same lines as China, India, and the rest of Asia. This article suggested that there should be 5 traditional continents (Antartica, North and South America, Africa, and Australia) and a 6th continent of Eurasia. Eurasia would consist of 4 sub-continents - Europe, China, the Indian sub-continent, and everything else.

While I am not sure what the practical purpose of this argument is, I think it further reinforces the idea that Westerners need to remember the political, economic, cultural, geophysical, and linguistic diversity within India and China.

Yet still, when I got off the plane in Bangalore, I was surprised at how big of a change it was going from Northern to Southern India.

Here, there are palm trees instead of deserts, a wet climate, and especially noticable - a vague semblance of order in the streets (there are occasional traffic signals) and somewhat less visible poverty. This factor may be less of a North vs South difference and more because this is the "Silicon Valley of India" but the difference remains.

There is also much less livestock in the streets (though it is definitely still prevalent - this morning a cow came up and started to drink from a puddle inches away from my feet as I waited to catch an auto-rickshaw to take me to the office).

The food is different - much spicier here, and with different breads and less rice than the north.

People speak different languages. In the north, Hindi is spoken by about 200 milion people. Here in Karnataka state (where Bangalore is), the three most widely spoken languages are - you guessed it - Kannada, Urdu and Tegalu.

And while I go most days without seeing a white person, they are more common here. Or at least nobody has tried to take a photo with me yet here.