Bengaluru (Bangalore)

Bengaluru is not a sightseeing city and trying to make it one is the mistake. Come for a weekend of eating, drinking, walking in the parks, and buying books. Lalbagh and Cubbon Park are the reason the place was liveable, and early morning in either is the best hour of the day. The Lalbagh rock is one of the oldest exposed surfaces on the subcontinent and almost nobody goes up it. VV Puram's food street after dark, the Russell Market in Shivajinagar in the morning, filter coffee standing up at a darshini — those are the actual experiences here. The city has the best independent bookshops in India and a working craft beer scene, both of which are genuine, not manufactured for visitors. What it does not have is a monument you must see. Tipu Sultan's summer palace and Bangalore Palace are both twenty-minute visits at most. The traffic is as bad as you have heard. Plan two things a day, in the same part of town, and use the Metro where it goes. The weather is the point — pleasant almost year-round, which is why everyone moved here.