Bengaluru

Bengaluru — still widely called Bangalore — is the city that runs India's software industry, and the label "Silicon Valley of India" tends to arrive before any other. But to picture Bengaluru only as glass office towers and traffic jams is to miss what makes it one of the most liveable and likeable of India's big cities: a mild, plateau climate that stays pleasant almost year-round, an unusual density of green space, and a cosmopolitan, come-one-come-all culture that has drawn people from every corner of India and beyond.

The capital of Karnataka sits on the Deccan plateau at roughly 900 metres above sea level, and that altitude is the key to everything. It gives the city the mild days and cool evenings that earned it the nickname "air-conditioned city" long before literal air conditioning was common, and it is the reason Bengaluru grew as a retreat — first as a Wodeyar and Tipu Sultan stronghold, then as a leafy British cantonment and pensioners' town, and finally as the "Garden City" of parks, tree-lined avenues and bungalow gardens. Founded in the early 16th century by the chieftain Kempe Gowda, whose name the airport and metro now carry, the city carries all of these layers at once.

For a traveller, Bengaluru is less about a single showpiece monument — there is no Taj here — and more about a mix. In a couple of days you can wander two of India's finest urban gardens, step inside a Tudor-style palace and an 18th-century Indo-Islamic summer retreat, stand before the vast Neo-Dravidian pile of the state legislature, drink some of the best filter coffee in the country, and cap the evening in the microbrewery district that has made Bengaluru the undisputed craft-beer and pub capital of India. The pleasures are urban, varied and easygoing rather than monumental.

The city is also a superb launch pad. Within a couple of hours' drive lie the sunrise viewpoint of Nandi Hills, the twin waterfalls of Shivanasamudra, the silk town and cinematic boulder country of Ramanagara, and — a little further — the palace city of Mysuru. Many visitors treat Bengaluru as the gateway to southern Karnataka, spending a day or two in the city before heading out to Mysuru, Coorg, the Hoysala temples or the coast.

Practically, Bengaluru suits almost any pace. It works as a two- to three-day city break, as a business trip with a day of sightseeing bolted on, or as the first stop of a longer Karnataka loop. The one thing to plan around is traffic: the city's growth has outrun its roads, and distances that look short on a map can eat an hour in the wrong part of the day. Base yourself well, cluster your sightseeing by area, and Bengaluru rewards you with an easy, green, endlessly grazeable kind of travel.