Lisa does Bangalore - Handbags, Heels and Passport
Video Playing Now: Handbags, Heels and Passport: Lisa does Bangalore in Style
By Lisa Francesca Nand
India to me always felt like one of those places you expect to arrive at weighed down by a back-pack with a pillowcase full of wet wipes, returning several months later and a few pounds lighter, having lost yourself on some beach in Goa, only to have found yourself in an Ashram, donned some pink robes and be, like, seriously chilled out, man, still sploshing around in sandals in the rain when you get back home before reality forces you to wash, get a haircut and get yourself something called A Job (welcome to the real world, kids...). At least that's how I envisaged it would be for me.
Unfortunately, when I went travelling after university, I got as far as Amsterdam before lack of funds saw me working as a waitress in an Irish bar.
And there I stayed for almost a year before, like, coming home seriously skint and seriously stressed....man... and seeking gainful employment. Fortunately I stayed relatively well-scrubbed in the Benelux but I was gutted about missing the opportunity to a) travel the world and b) lose a few kilos to roadside cooking.
I never expected to 'do India' in abject luxury. And Taj level luxury is probably the best level of luxury you could ever hope for. With a stop over in Mumbai, visiting the iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel on the city's magnificent waterfront, Victoria Station and Mumbai's beautiful Hanging Gardens, I headed to one of India's most cosmopolitan cities, Bangalore, or as it's recently reverted back to, Bengaluru.
Although commonly known as the Garden City due to its lush green spaces, the capital of the southern state of Karnataka is also home to some of India's most high tech industries. An influx of young, upwardly mobile workers has led to an increase of facilities to host them - bars, restaurants and high-end international brands. If that doesn't sound much like the India you envisaged fear not, this is still very much the 'real India'.
The colonial old town, crammed with crumbling buildings, selling every imaginable product, and the pockmarked concrete that constitutes as a pavement, crisscrossed by speeding rickshaws, is death defying. The heat and the smell of roadside stalls, sticky sweet shops and coffee cum curry houses is dizzying. Incense smoked temples fight for space between shacks, modern buildings and the odd confused looking cow, tethered to a stationary cart.
Despite the mayhem Bangalore is still a comparatively green city for India, the centerpiece of which is the 2400 acre botanical gardens complete with an intricate glass house modeled on London's long-since burned down Crystal Palace. It's a lovely place to seek shade under the flame-red flowers of a gulmohar tree by the lake.
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