Bengaluru

Bengaluru sits at about 920 metres, which is why the British put a cantonment here and why the evenings still cool down in a way no other big Indian city manages. It was a garden town, then a science town, then the place the world outsourced its software to — and it never paused to finish any of those versions of itself.

The result is a city of layers rather than monuments. A sixteenth-century market street runs into a glass office park; a temple queue forms outside a brewery. People arrive here to work and stay for the weather.

Kannada is the city's language, but Bengaluru has absorbed everyone — Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi and several versions of English, often inside one auto ride. Mornings are settled at a darshini counter: masala dosa eaten standing, filter coffee poured between tumbler and davara until it foams.

Evenings belong to whatever you are into — theatre at Ranga Shankara, a book club in Cubbon Park, an independent gig, a taproom that takes its own beer far too seriously. This is the one Indian metro where the default social unit is a small room of people who met over an interest.

Plan around traffic, not distance — twelve kilometres can take an hour at six in the evening, and the Metro beats any cab on the routes it covers. The queue at Vidyarthi Bhavan is shortest before eight. Cubbon Park closes to cars on Sundays, which is the only way to see it properly. And Nandi Hills only works if you leave by 4.30 am.

The city's lakes and groundwater are under real strain, and Bengaluru has run short of water within living memory. Refill bottles instead of buying them, and don't treat long showers as a hotel perk. Tip auto drivers and delivery riders properly — they absorb the traffic everyone else complains about.

Mysuru is three hours down the expressway and everything Bengaluru is not — a planned city with a palace at the centre of it and time to spare.