A postcard from Bangalore

Thanks to the COMED-K exam, I got to travel to Bangalore thrice the last year(2009).

The first thought that comes to my mind, when I recall about my trip to Bangalore is the city's awesome weather. I was in Bangalore in the month of May. At the time the temperatures soar to around 45 degree Celsius in Delhi, but Bangalore it was just around 20-22 degree Celsius Any Delhite would understand,why I really loved Bangalore's weather.

But apart from the good weather, here's my version on some of the features of the city:

The City: Bangalore being tagged the Silicon Valley of India, as a first time visitor you might expect it to look like a really hi-tech city with a modernized outlook. (At Least I did). Though it's not an extra ordinarily advanced city yet it's good and much like Delhi. Small sized housing societies are more popular here unlike big towers you find in the NCR. It is a picture perfect situation: Great whether and a lot of greenery around. Palm Trees are a common site.

The food: This is one thing I can't stop talking about.I had the actual version of the South Indian food and believe me this is far better than what you might have had elsewhere. Bangalore has very good restaurants. I might be a little biased here. The reason being you can find very good Pure Vegetarian restaurants of cuisines from round the world. For a vegetarian like me, it is a feast! I had lunch at a very popular Italian restaurant "Cable Cars". Though I don't remember the name of the dishes, but the food was really good. Dosa, Idli, Vada, Sambhar are intended to be snacks. So these where obviously not a part of the dinner menu of a hard core South Indian Restaurant "South-Indes" that served food from the four South Indian states namely Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka. It came to me as a surprise though. Again the food was really good. Another specialty is the filter coffee, which is served hot in small sized steel glasses. And not to forget some of the really good and new dishes I had at Jijaji's home and prepared by Deepali Didi. :) I should have had another post for the food sections.

The Language: People in Bangalore communicate in Tamil, Kannada and English. But there is sort of uncomfort with Hindi. There are no communication problems though as a majority of people understand English.

Public Transport: VOLVO buses run through out the city. Radio Taxi's are readilly available at any point of time. The local buses are a little better than the DTC buses. The Bangalore Metro is under construction. And the Autowala's do not run by meters.

Shopping: There are two popular market streets in Bangalore. The Brigade Road and the M.G. Road. (Did you know that the MG Road in Delhi is better known as the Ring Road ?) These are two perpendicular roads. What's special about these market streets is that apart from the branded stores like Levis, UCB and others, you can easily shop for tradinational stuff. Malls are a less common site though. Another popular market street is the Commercial Street.

Sight Seeing:

Though this was a exam oriented trip, I managed to take a walk around Ulsoor Lake. The lake is located near the MG Road and spreads over a space of 1.5 km. It was constructed by Kempegodwa II during the second half of the 16th Century. It's now famous for it's boating facilities. In fact this is the only place I went out to. But the other places include Tipu's Summer Palace, The Fort, Cubbon Park and some temples. You can find more details on this web page:http://www.discoverbangalore.com/sightseeing.htm .

Bangalore is also a city of Cafe Coffee Days. Why I am saying this is because I could see a Cafe Coffee Day outlet every 5km.( I traveled a lot through out the city because both the examination center and the counselling center were quite far away from Didi's house.) Amazed by this I found that out of 845 Cafe Coffee Day outlets in India, 141 outlets are in Bangalore itself. In fact the first outlet to be opened was in Bangalore (Brigade Road).