Hubballi

Date arrived: 14th February 2024

Date Departed:         15th February 2024

Favourite sight: Neo Coffee shop and bookstore

Average Cost: £33.50 PPPD (Excluding Valentine's meal from treat budget)

We spent an afternoon in Hubballi (previously known as Hubli) as we didn't really want to spend another day in Badami, and then arrive here after midnight. This entailed returning our train tickets and getting a taxi, but it was worth it in the end.

14th February 2024

The taxi ride to Hubballi was pretty straightforward, and had the advantage of dropping us right at our hotel - which was actually quite nice! The reception team told us there was a Valentine's dinner on that evening, which answered our question of whether the day is celebrated here. We knew there was a railway museum in Hubballi, so thought we migh head there, perhaps via some light lunch and a coffee. Julie managed to find the fabulous Neo Coffee and Bookstore (courtesy of Google) so we wrestled with various apps to obtain some transport, and eventually found an Ola driver willing to take the fare.

It's worth saying here that, as with many places in India, there is a lot of infrastructure work going on in Hubballi. The area right outside our hotel was home to a growing concrete road overpass, which looked set to run right across the centre of the city, and thus was causing a lot of traffic disruption. This meant that it really wasn't viable to try and walk more than a few hundred metres here - and for that we were pleased to be making a (literally) flying visit.

We spent a really nice hour at Neo, which made superb Lattes, and had an excellent selection of books (many in English), maps and some very funny posters - paticularly in the incredibly clean washrooms.

From here we arrranged another Ola to the Hubli Railway Museum and, co-incidentally, ended up with the same driver. The Railway Museum was fascinating. Entry was a mere 20 Rupees each, and because the place was quiet, we basically got a 1:1 guided tour of the whole establishment. There were several carriages and engines, as well as old carriages converted to a Cafe (closed, unfortunately) and a cinema, showing half-hourly reels about various topics, and alternating Hindi and English. There were also permanent displays of historical railway memorabilia, including a fully equipped Station Master's office, and various bits of signalling and communication equipment from across the last 150 years.

We sat and chatted to our guide - Subhash - for a time, learning that he had moved back to Hubballi recently for family reasons, but his calling was as a dance instructor and choreographer, and he shared some pretty cool clips from his instagram page.

We flagged down a tuk-tuk back to our hotel, and had a bit of time before we decided to check out the Valentine's dinner and see what was happening. This seemed to be a far bigger thing than we expected, as the entire rooftop restaurant had been beautifully decorated with Balloons and streamers, and the excellent selection of buffet food laid out was all Valentines themed. Sometimes this just ment the name (the Watermelon juice labelled as a Love Potion) but in many cases, particularly the desserts, the dished were clearly desiged around Valentine's day: I have to say that the Guleb Jaman where the syrupy sauce that had been replaced with a pink, viscous, rose flavoured syrup wa NOT an improvement on the standard recipe!

We also took the opportunity to enjoy a beer!

15th February 

An early start this morning for a 7AM pickup to get to the airport. No breakfast for us unfortunately, but we figured we could get something whilst waiting for the plane. Hubli Airport has a new shiny terminal building, but is very small. Afer the most thorough luggage X-Ray I've ever had (and as expected, my portable Espresso machine caused concern) our luggage was checked all the way through to Kolkata, and we sat and waited for the flight to board.

There was a food outlet at the airport - but I kid you not, it had run out of food, and wasn't expecting a delivery until 10:00, just as we would be flying! We did manage to buy a couple of packets of emergency biscuits to tide us over however.

The flight to Chennai in a small but modern turboprop was uneventful, and we landed safely, entering the modern terminal building with several hours to kill before our flight to Kolkata. We ate some crazily expensive airport food, and then waited out the four hour layover, which inevitably turned into a 6 hour layover, before eventually boarding the Indigo A320 for our two hour flight.