Oktoberfest - Bangalore Style!

This weekend Kingfisher (indian beer / conglomerate) hosted Bangalore's version of Oktoberfest at the palace grounds. A bunch of us from work went to the event on Saturday. We showed up at around 4:30 pm at which point the ex-pats outnumbered the locals. It changed though later in the evening as the bands started playing. The big draw for Saturday night was KK - a Bollywood and soft-rock musician. He played 10+ songs -- and the crowd was wild -- most energetic concert that I've been too in a long time (although that's not really saying much considering the types of concerts I go to).

What I actually had the most fun doing was video-ing people as they were dancing and singing along with KK --- bunch of camera hams! At one point, one of the event workers took off his orange worker vest so that he could show us his stuff -- he was quite a good dancer! Sadly I'm quite a bad video-taker -- I've attached a snip of one of my videos (my point and shoot camera didn't like all the lights -- so there is a lot of purple striping).

A couple of us left a bit early so that we could beat the crowd and catch an auto back to our apartments --- of course the auto drivers wanted to charge us exorbitant amounts of money --- finally got one of the drivers down to Rs. 180 -- which was about Rs. 60 more than we should have paid -- better than walking 12 kms though! (and yes -- we only overpaid by a little more than $1 -- and the trip back cost us less than $4 --- but it's the principle of the thing)

Side note: did a little research on Oktoberfest in Bangalore -- guess it's been going on since 2000 -- although reading a newspaper article from 2003, it's obvious that the festival has changed quite a bit! No german bands and no brats (there were hot dogs for sale though along with a lot of other local food -- couldn't get myself to eat a hot dog in India -- although, who knows, it might have been a veg dog)