Believe it or not, this was only my second time in Bangalore. The opportunities had come often enough, but somehow, the two-and-a-half-hour flight from Delhi to the south had always felt like a greater distance than it really was. Travel anxiety has a funny way of making geography feel elastic. So Bangalore, despite all the excitement I had heard was brewing in the city that is so often called the Silicon Valley of India, remained a place I kept postponing. Even the pilot, as we began our descent, introduced Bangalore with a certain pride, as though welcoming us into a city that had long ago learnt to make room for both ambition and memory.
I had, of course, heard about the traffic. Everyone tells you about Bangalore traffic. But as our car made its slow, determined journey from the airport towards The Leela Palace Bengaluru, on the other side of the city, near the old airport, it was not the traffic I found myself looking at. It was the trees.
Huge, generous canopies rose above the roads, their branches stretching out as though the city had been built around them rather than the other way around. The closer we got to what was once the older Bangalore, the denser they seemed to become. There were beautiful Art Deco bungalows tucked behind walls and foliage, old houses that seemed to have survived several versions of the city, and enormous heritage trees that must have stood witness to Bangalore’s transformation from a quiet garrison town into the sprawling, restless metropolis it is today.
There is something about entering the older parts of a city that I have always found deeply moving. The newer edges of our cities can often feel interchangeable: glass towers, concrete facades, wide roads and the same familiar language of urban development. But the old parts hold on to something less tangible. They have quirks, scars, smells, proportions and silences that belong only to them. They have a personality. You can feel that a city has lived here.
Then we arrived at The Leela Palace Bengaluru. The first thing I saw was a row of tall palms rising from the gardens beside the lobby, their silhouettes almost theatrical against the afternoon sky. It took me no time at all to understand why Bangalore earned its old moniker, the Garden City. Here, the garden does not merely exist around the city. It seems to have seeped into its bones.
That feeling continued at Azulian House, the hotel’s newly launched restaurant, where the agave plant becomes both inspiration and muse, and Latin American and Nikkei flavours come together on the plate and in the glass. But what caught my eye, perhaps unsurprisingly, were the botanists. Portraits of some of India’s most celebrated botanists line the space, including Gustav Hermann Krumbiegel, the German botanist and landscape designer whose influence on Bangalore’s gardens is deeply woven into the city’s history. Even the cocktails borrow their names from these figures, turning what could have been a decorative detail into a lesson in the city’s botanical past.
I loved the way Azulian House seemed to blur the line between indoors and outdoors. The gardens outside become part of the room. Botanical motifs climb the walls, little creepers appear to wind their way through the interiors and, beyond the enormous windows, the city’s trees sway gently in the breeze.
It is an unusual kind of luxury, this. In a city increasingly defined by speed, technology and the relentless churn of urban life, there was something deeply comforting about sitting inside a room that still allowed you to look out and see trees moving in the wind.
By the next morning, even a 6:30 a.m. visit to Mysore Saree Udyog — yes, you read that right — came with the same distraction. I found myself looking out at the trees. They had become a sort of running commentary to my time in Bangalore, appearing between appointments, behind buildings, along roads and in the little spaces where you least expected them.
I made a mental note: before I left, I had to see Cubbon Park.
But before that came Farmlore, a destination dining experience set within a serene 33-acre estate on the outskirts of the city. And, naturally, there were more trees.
Heritage Mallika mango trees, coconut palms and a working farm formed the landscape around us. What made the experience particularly lovely was that the farm was not merely a backdrop to the meal. It was part of it. The kitchen’s relationship with the land felt tangible, with ingredients grown on the estate finding their way onto the table later that evening.
There was something satisfying about this circularity: seeing something growing in the earth and then encountering it again, transformed, on your plate.
Under the stewardship of Kaushik Raju and with Chef Johnson Ebenezer at the helm, Farmlore brings together farming, cooking and the rhythms of the land in a way that feels both rooted and contemporary. There is live fire, fermentation, regional influences and global technique, but the thing I remember most is the feeling of being surrounded by a landscape that was still very much alive.
By then, I had begun to wonder if Bangalore was trying to tell me something.
A city of gardens and old trees, of bungalow-lined roads and shaded avenues, of landscapes that have somehow survived the concrete that keeps arriving around them. Then, on a Sunday morning, there was Cubbon Park. Right in the heart of the city, it felt like an exhale.
Runners, walkers, families and an astonishing number of happy dogs had claimed the morning. Everyone seemed to be making the most of the weather, moving slowly enough to notice where they were. I even took my friend’s senior golden retriever for a walk, which felt like perhaps the most Bangalore thing I could have done without actually being a Bangalorean.
As I walked beneath the trees, I thought about what I always look for when I arrive in a new metropolitan city. Not its monuments or its obvious attractions, but its temperament. What does it reveal about itself when you stop looking at it as a visitor? What does it offer that feels distinctly its own?
For me, Bangalore revealed itself through its trees.
A city that has grown enormously, but still seems to understand the value of shade. A city racing towards the future while allowing its past to remain rooted in the landscape. A city where nature does not merely survive in the gaps between concrete, but insists on being part of the architecture of everyday life.