Bengaluru - a modern city with all the usual South India traffic, congestion and air pollution issues

Sightseeing

The wonderful Bengaluru Metro. Clean, AC, orderly, efficient and a great way to get about town when you consider that the roads are basically gridlocked

Lalbagh Botanic Gardens. Mercifully close to a Metro station so we didn't have to use the roads. Even got propositioned by the auto drivers for a ride to the gate of the gardens even though it was a 3 minute walk and no roads to cross. Amazing! Botanic Gardens really good, really old and a centre of research. Once again there had been a flower show which was now over so lots of debris around from that. Notices everywhere about no eating drinking etc but nobody was obeying that with all the food and drink stalls around the gardens so we had Diana's birthday cake on a park bench. Different!

The wholesale bazar in the Chickpete district. Total culture shock. Impossible to walk along pavement or road stall after shop after wagon of goods for sale. We went in some jewellers but couldn't understand how they arrived at the prices despite the extravagant use of weighing scales and the many keystrokes they applied to the calculators

A couple of western-style shopping malls including Marks and Spencers and Starbucks

The main train station and bus stand at Majestic - also just about connected with the Metro despite a bit of a walk

Seven Rivers microbrewery - lovely beer excellent ambience

Bengaluru Airport. Super modern lovely to look at -great!

We stayed in The Oberoi Hotel

super luxury for madam's birthday they came up trumps with balloons in the room a happy birthday bedspread and a lovely white chocolate cake.

Incredible hotel built round some ancient trees that reach right to the top floor and a superb tropical oasis in a very busy and noisy part of town. Right next to the Trinity Metro station can't give too much praise for the Oberoi absolutely wonderful.