I’ve been on two separate biz trips to bangalore. I stayed at a company house each time. Bangalore has higher elevation so its temperature is comfortable. We had a driver to get us to the office and back to the guest house.
The commute to and from work was the most fascinating thing. The morning commute had intersections filled with buses with people sitting on top and riding the bumper, auto rickshaws, cars, motorcycles, a cow or two lounging in the intersection, and a six year old wandering between the traffic. Mayhem.
The evening commute is dark so it’s not the visual extravaganza. I usually took a nap to the make the 1.5 hrs go by faster.
Every day the route would be different as the drivers would let each other know which route was the “best”.
You would see modern office buildings next to a neighborhood of houses made of cardboard. You can’t really call them homeless because that was actually their multi-generational home.
On my first trip, I took a weekend and flew from bangalore to new delhi, took a train to agra to see the taj mahal, took an overnight train to jaipur to see the city, took a train back to new delhi and flew back to bangalore. When I got off the train in agra, a guy offered to give me a tour of the city to see the taj, mini taj, agra fort, take me to eat for the day. $20.
My second trip I got food poisoning that set in minutes before my departing flight from bangalore to frankfurt connecting to dallas. I got on the flight and suffered my way back to dallas where the flight attendants forced me to deplane in a wheelchair. I had spent the entire flight from frankfurt to dallas in the bathroom. They periodically checked on me to make sure I was still alive.