Bangalore — officially Bengaluru since 2006 — is India's tech capital and the fastest-growing large city in the country. It is also, somehow, still a garden city. Cubbon Park sits at the centre of everything, shaded by trees planted in the 1870s, and even in the densest parts of the city you are rarely more than ten minutes from somewhere green. The combination of a relatively mild climate (the altitude keeps temperatures reasonable year-round), a huge, young, mobile population, and decades of wealth has produced a city with more good restaurants, bars, and cultural venues than almost anywhere else in India.
The older Bangalore is easy to find if you look south of the centre. Basavanagudi and Malleshwaram are largely traditional South Indian neighbourhoods, with old temples, Brahmin coffee houses, and street food that has not changed in fifty years. The Bull Temple in Basavanagudi, Tipu Sultan's wooden summer palace, and Lal Bagh botanical garden — begun by Hyder Ali in 1760 — all belong to a pre-software history that the city has not entirely discarded. Vidhana Soudha, the granite neo-Dravidian legislative building that dominates the civic centre, is a more recent monument: built in 1956 as a deliberate assertion of independent India's capability.
The food culture is one of the best arguments for coming here. The South Indian breakfast — masala dosa, idli, vada, filter coffee — is taken seriously in a way it is taken seriously in relatively few cities. Places like MTR on Lalbagh Road and Vidyarthi Bhavan in Basavanagudi have been doing the same breakfast for eighty years and have not declined. Alongside the traditional joints, the city has developed a restaurant scene that reflects its cosmopolitan workforce: there is good Andhra biryani, Mangalorean seafood, Mughlai, and a range of international cooking that has grown with the tech industry.
The nightlife, by Indian standards, is genuinely developed. Indiranagar and Koramangala are full of craft breweries, cocktail bars, and restaurants that stay open until midnight. Bangalore is a good base for the rest of Karnataka — Hampi is six hours by bus, Mysuru is two, and the Western Ghats are within reach for a weekend.