Bangalore Lifestyles

Much of Bangalore looks like our neighborhood in Koramangala. The streets of this, Indian’s Garden City, are lined with lacy and often lushly flowering trees. Children and dogs reign freely, and street sellers, fruit and vegetable carts, and mom and pop markets are commonplace.

For a 21st century feel, however, Bangalore has upscale shopping malls and supermarkets as well as several 5 star deluxe hotels like the Oberoi Bangalore, Taj West End, Windsor Sheraton and Towers, and Leela Palace Hotel.



Part of the Leela Kempinski Palaces, Hotels, and Resorts chain, it offers “panoramic views of the inner courtyard with lush gardens and the mist covered waterfalls.”

Long-term ex-pats and local professionals in Bangalore can find housing in a number of western style residential developments. Two of these are Palm Meadows, “a 95-acre integrated gated community with its luxury villas dotting the exquisite landscape,” and Ozone: “beyond-the-edge solutions in homes, offices, shopping, hospitality and leisure spaces.”

Bangalore: Life in the Hood

A friend sent me an email asking if Bangalore now looked and felt just like the Silicon Valley in California. My response was that, even with the infusion of high tech companies, their influence is definitely strong but not all encompassing.


I like our neighborhood in Koramangala because, even though there are trendy cafes with wireless Internet access (including a very expensive Italian one called Barista LavAzza), it has retained its Indian flavor. It has crowded food stalls, fruit carts, unpaved streets, small businesses like beauty shops and travel agents, and wandering through it all, an occasional cow. The building boom means lots of construction sites with women doing much of the work, mostly carrying heavy loads of rocks in baskets on their heads. Their children often dangle from their backs or cling to their skirts.

The big surprise was finding a herd of a dozen or more water buffalo wallowing in mud created by the recent rains about a block from our comfortable condo. Their caregivers seemed to be a family that included several young children. They scurried inside their corrugated metal roofed lean to when they spotted my camera. It was all just a few doors down from the Men’s American Beauty Parlour and next to a little cart where a beautiful young mother ironed her clients’ garments with a coal iron. As I took her picture, a tractor lumbered past.