Bengaluru: India’s High-Tech Hub with Heritage, Flavours, and Surprises
In this episode, Tim and David explore Bengaluru, the bustling capital of Karnataka, often dubbed the “Silicon Valley of India.” From lush parks and historic palaces to buzzing food streets and co-working cafés, Bengaluru is a multi-layered city that blends modern innovation with deep cultural roots. David returns from a recent media trip and shares his favorite finds—from hidden flower markets to high-tech cafés.
Topics Covered
Top Things to See & Do
- Bangalore Palace – An Indo-Gothic royal residence inspired by Windsor Castle. No photos inside, but well worth exploring.
- Cubbon Park – The city’s tranquil green lung, great for walks and a welcome escape from the urban buzz.
- KR Market Flower Market – A raw and colorful morning market, best visited early. A local-only spot full of incredible photo ops and street life.
- Visvesvaraya Industrial & Technological Museum – A five-story, hands-on science museum showcasing India’s contributions to tech, medicine, and space.
Where to Eat & Drink
- MTR 1924 – A legendary local favorite for dosa, idli, and filter coffee, running since 1924.
- Ramashwaram Café – Great value, popular with locals, and known for delicious vegetarian fare.
- Third Wave Coffee – One of India’s best artisanal coffee chains, perfect for a morning stop or co-working break.
- Paper & Pie – A trendy co-working café offering craft coffee and stylish desserts in a creative atmosphere.
- Toit Brewpub – A lively craft brewery with local beers and a buzzing social scene in Indiranagar.
Neighborhoods to Explore
- Church Street – A hub for international dining, indie bookshops, nightlife, and digital nomads.
- Koramangala – Trendy, youthful, and full of tech offices and stylish cafés.
- Indiranagar – A can’t-miss neighborhood for foodies, brewers, and boutique hotel lovers.
Where to Stay
- JW Marriott Bengaluru – Overlooks Cubbon Park and sits beside UB City Mall, perfect for luxury, convenience, and access to great restaurants.
- Taj West End – A colonial-era garden retreat that feels like a quiet oasis in the middle of the city.
- Shangri-La Bengaluru – Features a rooftop bar, world-class Chi Spa, and that signature Shangri-La luxury.
- Bloom Hotel – Indiranagar – A bright, modern, and affordable micro-hotel ideal for budget-conscious travelers looking to stay central.
Can’t-Miss Experiences
- Indiranagar – A buzzing neighborhood with the perfect mix of restaurants, nightlife, boutique hotels, and craft breweries.
- Kempegowda International Airport – Surprisingly beautiful, modern, and efficient—featuring eye-catching installations and smooth service.
- Gateway to Karnataka – Bengaluru is a jumping-off point to explore tiger safaris, elephant reserves, and lush coffee hills in one of India’s most biodiverse provinces.
Final Thoughts
Bengaluru may not be the first city travellers consider in India, but it offers rich rewards to those willing to dig deeper. Whether you’re chasing street eats, modern luxury, or the pulse of India’s tech revolution, this southern capital offers a compelling mix of tradition and innovation.
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Disclosure
- Some links in these show notes are affiliate links. If you use them to book, we may earn a small commission—at no extra cost to you. This helps support our work in producing the Travel in 10 podcast. Our team visited Bengaluru on a hosted media trip.
Transcript
Colorful, diverse, and undeniably dynamic.
Speaker A:There's no place on earth like the subcontinent of India.
Speaker A:One thing I've learned through about half a dozen visits to the country is that you're always going to come back with a good story.
Speaker A:Today I'm joined by my co host, David Brody, as always, and we're going to talk about a place in India where I have not visited.
Speaker A:So I'm going to ask a few questions.
Speaker A:And I know you have just returned.
Speaker A:In fact, you're still fighting the jet lag a little bit from this trip.
Speaker A:Why don't you tell us a little bit about where you've just returned from for sure.
Speaker B:Well, I spent a little bit of time in southern India in the Karnataka province.
Speaker B:And probably one of my favorite places during my trip was the capital city there, a place that probably a lot of people in the west know as Bangalore.
Speaker B: was actually changed back in: Speaker B:And a really interesting city.
Speaker B:I mean, this is city that a lot of people call the sort of Silicon Valley of India.
Speaker B:It's where a lot of the, you know, high tech and sort of technological developments are happening in the country.
Speaker B:Very well known for that.
Speaker B:It's well known for being kind of green city.
Speaker B:A lot of park space throughout the city as well.
Speaker B:It is a place, I would say of all the places I've traveled, that to find those really like hidden gems and the great parts of the city, you had to dig a little harder.
Speaker B:For sure, it could be a challenging city to travel around, but certainly super dynamic and interesting place as well.
Speaker A:Very cool, very cool.
Speaker A:So speaking of digging for treasure and finding some gems, what were some of the gems that you found?
Speaker A:What are some of the things that visitors can do when they go to this city?
Speaker B:Well, I'll call out, first of all, a couple of the well known, kind of tried and true ones and then maybe a few lesser known ones.
Speaker B:You know, probably one of the most iconic places to go is Bangalore palace, this sort of stunning Indo Gothic palace.
Speaker B:It was inspired a bit by, by England's Windsor Castle.
Speaker B:You could definitely see those influences there and definitely worth going and spending some time at.
Speaker B:You can tour through all, all parts of the palace.
Speaker B:One thing to be aware of, they don't let you take any pictures or video inside, so, but, but very much worth seeing and somewhere that I would highly recommend.
Speaker B:And then they're kind of equivalent of Central Park, I guess, a place called Kubon park.
Speaker B:Kind of a serene, quiet, and escape in the middle of the city.
Speaker B:Place well known for kind of jogging, unwinding in nature right in the heart of the city.
Speaker B:Maybe not the type of thing that people expect to find in a, in a busy packed Indian city as this is.
Speaker B:So those are, those are definitely two that I would call out.
Speaker B:And then maybe on the slightly lesser known end of the spectrum they've got a great flower market.
Speaker B:This is you know, very much vibrant, colorful morning market that you can find here.
Speaker B:And this is, I should say when I was there I was the only tourist there.
Speaker B:This, this is not like a prime tourist attraction necessarily.
Speaker B:This is all locals.
Speaker B:This is like a wholesale flower market and fruit and vegetable market.
Speaker B:And it is, it is a bit of gritty India for sure.
Speaker B:Like it is, it is dirt roads and, and it is, it is a full on experience when, when you go down there.
Speaker B:But some makes for stunning pictures with, with all the flowers there and really does give you a, a good sense of what India is like and getting more into the, you know, a little bit more authentic local experience.
Speaker B:So I would recommend seeking that out.
Speaker B:And early morning is the best time for that.
Speaker B:I was there about 7:30, 8:00 in the morning and it was very bustling, jam packed already by, by that time.
Speaker B:And then another one that really enjoyed when we were there as well is the Industrial and Tech museum as well.
Speaker B:Being that this is like a city, a really cool science tech museum they've got there.
Speaker B:It's very hands on and I certainly didn't realize the extent for example of India's space program or some of their contributions to medicine and other just the tech industry in general.
Speaker B:And it has got five floors of interactive exhibits and sort of the history of science and technology and innovation throughout India.
Speaker B:So definitely something that I, I would, I would recommend checking out as well.
Speaker B:1, 1 watch out or one thing to just be aware of I would say when, when you come to the city is that it is busy, really busy.
Speaker B:Like it is probably more so than almost anywhere I have been in the world.
Speaker B:You know taking, taking an Uber or a you know, a rickshaw from or Tak Tak sort of from one one part of the city to the other.
Speaker B:You know, often I would be doing trips that were 5km, 6km, that could take over an hour because jam packed the city was and just how, how busy you will find different parts of it.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:And everywhere else I've been in India, I mean again I haven't been to Bangalore but you know, whether it's Delhi or Mumbai or it's in southern India.
Speaker A:Everywhere I've gone, I, I think it's, it's probably some of the best people watching in the world.
Speaker A:Like, I think you could probably sit down on a bench for an hour and, and you would never be bored.
Speaker A:You know, I mean, I've seen things in India that, that, that you would just never see anywhere else in the world.
Speaker A:And did you find that whether you were in the green spaces, which that does actually surprise me to hear about how many green spaces there were in Bangalore or whether it's at the flower market or just walking down the street.
Speaker A:Did you.
Speaker A:Was the people watching pretty, pretty good there as well?
Speaker B:100%.
Speaker B:Everywhere you look there is something going on and something different to see.
Speaker B:And it's, it's going 24 hours a day.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:It is a super lively, super active city.
Speaker B:And I would say, you know, maybe one of the things a bit unique to Bengalur as well, or Bengaluru is that you definitely, you know, you get, you know, all ends of the spectrum from, from a, you know, social, economic perspective.
Speaker B:And there are some really quite nice, quite high end parts of the city.
Speaker B:We were in a mall called UB City, which definitely kind of the most luxurious mall in the, the international designer brands, you know, some of the most expensive shopping I've seen anywhere in the world.
Speaker B:You know, contrasting with other parts of the city where, you know, you see the very opposite end of the spectrum.
Speaker B:So you really do have kind of all ends of things there.
Speaker B:One thing great about UB City is that they had this great outdoor area right at the top of the mall where a number of really, really good restaurants.
Speaker B:So somewhere I would, I would really recommend from a, from a dining perspective.
Speaker B:We went to a great Turkish restaurant.
Speaker B:I think it was called Oz Oz.
Speaker B:Modern Turkish, if I remember correctly.
Speaker B:Great Turkish restaurant up there, but a ton of great restaurants and nightlife and stuff up there.
Speaker B:So, so that was definitely somewhere I would recommend checking out.
Speaker A:We're talking, we're talking about food.
Speaker A:Let's, you know, we always, in this podcast we talk about favorite places to eat.
Speaker A:What would you recommend?
Speaker B:So I'll call it a few.
Speaker B:I mean it was a couple of specific restaurants and then maybe a couple of districts as well.
Speaker B: So place called MTR: Speaker B:Known for its doses and Italy's and filter coffee.
Speaker B:Very iconic place.
Speaker B:And another one that was super popular with locals.
Speaker B:Multiple locations throughout the city where we had great food.
Speaker B:Me And a group that I was with called Ramaswaram Cafe, you know, we went to a couple of different locations.
Speaker B:The one I liked best was probably on a street called, if I remember correctly, it's 100 miles street or something similar to that.
Speaker B:But they had, you know, I bought dinner for a group who I was traveling with that one night and I think for six of us, dinner and drinks for everybody was about 13 Canadian dollars for six people.
Speaker B:So it's very affordable, really great food.
Speaker B:And you know, this is definitely again a place where you're going to see far more locals than travelers at.
Speaker B:The other thing the city was known for is a really good coffee scene.
Speaker B:You know, there's a chain called Third Wave Coffee that had a number of locations throughout the city.
Speaker B:Probably my favorite coffee spot was a place called Paper and Pie which combines sort of a co working space with artisanal coffee and desserts.
Speaker B:So that's one I would highly, highly recommend as well.
Speaker B:And then just in terms of districts to go to if you're looking for cool restaurants, probably probably my favorite was a place called Church Street.
Speaker B:This is, this has got a ton of different, you know, coffee shops, restaurants, international cuisine.
Speaker B:There's a great pizza place called the Pizza Bakery with big wood burning ovens there, a lot of cool bars and restaurants, a lot of micro breweries there as well.
Speaker B:And the other thing I would say it's known for, big shopping district, nightlife district and bookshops, a ton of, a ton of different bookshops.
Speaker B:So if you're a book lover, a great, great place for that as well.
Speaker B:And also a lot of co working spaces.
Speaker B:So you know, you really get a bit of a sense of the, you know, that India's role in the modern tech industry there.
Speaker B:There was, you know, wework head to head an outpost there on Church Street.
Speaker B:There was another one called Beehive which was a local Indian sort of variant of like a wework type place that was kind of buzzing.
Speaker B:And then another one called Indicube that had multiple locations throughout the city as well.
Speaker B:So I could see it being like a great destination for like digital nomads if you wanted to go spend a month working there or something and immersing yourself in kind of that Indian high tech culture, you know, around, around Church Street.
Speaker B:And Koramangala was another neighborhood that had a lot of that, that sort of high tech flavor and some of the cool restaurants and shops and stuff as well.
Speaker A:Very cool, very cool.
Speaker A:And I know we've talked about this in the past as well that India, in as much as it is fascinating and totally engaging, it can also be a country that visitors find exhausting.
Speaker A:And so I always recommend, if somebody's going to India for the first time, be very careful about your hotels.
Speaker A:You know, choose a hotel that's going to be comfortable, that you're going to go back to at the end of the day.
Speaker A:That's your refuge, that you feel truly relaxed and you can exhale.
Speaker A:And I'm sure you have a couple places that you would recommend staying in Bangalore and in that area.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean there's, there's no doubt about it, you can, you can find things at all ends of the budget spectrum.
Speaker B:But this is somewhere I splurge a little bit when it comes to hotels because there are some great luxury hotels that are quite affordable, you know, in terms of being international world class luxury hotels as well.
Speaker B:The JW Marriott there is in a great location.
Speaker B:It's overlooking Cuban Park.
Speaker B:It's right adjacent to that UB City mall that I talked about earlier.
Speaker B:So you got a lot of great dining options, some of the great coffee shops in town around there.
Speaker B:Taj is, you know, a well known Indian luxury hotel chain.
Speaker B:They've got a number of locations throughout the city.
Speaker B:I had a chance to see a few of them.
Speaker B:Probably if I was going to call out one, I would call it the Taj West End.
Speaker B:It's a sort of colonial area era hotel in a really lush garden setting.
Speaker B:Made a very serene escape in the heart of the city.
Speaker B:Shangri La has a really stunning property in the city that had a great rooftop bar.
Speaker B:It had what looked like a phenomenal spa, their Chi Spa there.
Speaker B:So the Shangri La is always a great choice anywhere in the world but certainly this looked like a great location.
Speaker B:And then if you are looking a little bit at the more budget friendly but you still want to be in sort of a modern kind of boutique style place.
Speaker B:There was a, seemed to be an Indian chain of hotels that I saw a couple of different locations throughout the city called Bloom Hotels that looked very kind of bright, modern, you know that, but much more affordable kind of micro rooms and that as well, that, that would I think be a solid choice as well.
Speaker A:Fantastic, fantastic.
Speaker A:And I've done a couple of projects with Taj, stayed with them in, in Varanasi and I did a tiger safari with them as well.
Speaker A:And, and I can hardly recommend them Shangri La as well.
Speaker A:I've been around the world with Shangri La and there's always that thing I love about Shangri La is the essence.
Speaker A:You know, they have this, this scent that is common in all of their hotels.
Speaker A:And so, you know, I stayed at one of the shanks I stayed at was in Vancouver in your hometown.
Speaker A:And every morning I would wake up thinking I was in Hong Kong or Kuala Lumpur or somewhere like that.
Speaker A:But because the scent in the room was the same in all these other places and I'd be like, oh, okay, I'm in Vancouver.
Speaker A:And I was excited to be in Vancouver as well.
Speaker B:It's funny you say that because I was staying with a group of travel media that we were traveling around together.
Speaker B:We were not staying at the Shangri La, we were staying at another hotel, but went to an event at the Shangri La one evening.
Speaker B:And the moment we walked in, that smell hits you.
Speaker B:And I turned to somebody, I was like, whoa, that's the smell of a five star hotel.
Speaker B:We have a rhyme today.
Speaker B:Far nicer place that we are staying right now.
Speaker A:I don't know if they bottle it, but I would, I would definitely take it with me wherever I went because I love the essence at the Shangri La.
Speaker A:So just before we finish this one up, any can't miss experiences that visitors should definitely do before they leave town?
Speaker B:I would call it a camp miss Neighborhood.
Speaker B:A place called, I'm probably going to mispronounce this, but I believe it's Indiran Indir Ranagar I believe was the name of it.
Speaker B:And of all the neighborhoods that I had a chance to spend some time in, definitely this was the most kind of trendy, trendy spot in town.
Speaker B:A lot of great restaurants.
Speaker B:This is where some of the, you know, one of the outposts of Ramaswaram Cafe that I talked about earlier is there they've got a place called Toit, which is like a craft brewery.
Speaker B:Really live, live the atmosphere.
Speaker B:Blume Hotels had had one of their, their outposts here as well.
Speaker B:So if you're looking for kind of cool restaurants, modern, you know, an easy, relaxing place to stay in the city and quite central, this would definitely be my can't miss neighborhood.
Speaker B:And then the other thing I would call out is just Bangalore's also got a really modern, well designed, super efficient airport as well.
Speaker B:It's really cool, modern design.
Speaker B:They've created all these, it's hard to describe them.
Speaker B:They're like these giant wicker baskets and modern art displays all hanging from the roof all throughout the hotel or sort of throughout the airport.
Speaker B:It's clearly a very new airport, a super efficient airport as well.
Speaker B:So not Normally somewhere I would call it as a can't miss, but it was very cool.
Speaker B:Airport, highly recommend it.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:First impressions matter and also last impressions.
Speaker A:And so, you know, likely you're going to be flying in or flying out of that airport.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So that is definitely an important thing.
Speaker A:I've learned a lot today.
Speaker A:I put Bangalore and the area on my list for my next trip to India, which is long overdue.
Speaker A:And thank you so much, David, for, for sharing about your very, very recent trip there.
Speaker B:Yeah, and one last thing I would say is like that just in terms of, you know, why to go.
Speaker B:I mean, part of it is definitely seeing if you want to see that sort of modern, emerging tech industry that's happening in India and get some of the flavor of that, that's definitely something that you're going to get when you're here, if you find the right neighborhoods and you do have to dig a little bit to find them.
Speaker B:But also this is a great gateway to this tremendous province in southern India, Karnataka, where the most tigers anywhere in the world, the most elephants anywhere in the world, some great coffee hill stations.
Speaker B:So there is a lot to recommend this as an area to come spend some time.
Speaker B:For sure.
Speaker A:That sounds amazing.
Speaker A:And as somebody who had an absolutely spellbinding tiger safari in central India several years, many years ago, I mean, eight, nine years ago, I can say that there's definitely almost nothing more thrilling.
Speaker A:I mean, I've been on many African safaris and African safaris are incredible, but seeing a royal Bengal tiger in the wild is something that you're never going to forget.
Speaker A:So that sounds like something also to put on the list.
Speaker A:Thanks so much, David.
Speaker B:Thanks, Tim.
Speaker B:And we're going to be back next week.
Speaker B:I'm actually going to do a special edition of Tribal Intent together with one of our other podcast hosts from the Voyage Gate Podcast Network, James Hammond from the Winging podcast, who was with me when we were in India last week.
Speaker B:And we're going to talk a little bit about some of the other things outside of Bengaluru that you can see in Karnataka province as well.
Speaker B:So I'm looking forward to catching up with James for that conversation as well.
Speaker A:Sounds good.
Speaker A:Looking forward to it.
Speaker B:Thanks him.
Speaker A:Thanks, David.
