Top 10 Places: Bangalore

As I’ve been writing about these top 10 places, I have picked places that I’ve known as an adult. As a child I was lucky enough to visit places such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, Calcutta, Sydney and Christchurch. I grew up in Nepal, living for the last year in Kathmandu –probably one of the most interesting places I’ve ever lived in. But it’s hard to write about a place that I knew so distantly and in a childlike way.

So it is that when I think about cities in Asia to include in my top 10, I am going to talk about Bangalore and not the many other places I visited as a child.

My husband’s family is from this state capital in south-central India. In 2008, V and I visited his extended family there, timing our visit in order to attend weddings of two different cousins. It was a whirlwind of meetings with relatives and taking part in the many and lengthy marriage celebrations. I blogged about this trip a few years ago.

As I noted then, the trip for me was an odd combination of new and familiar. I had never been to Bangalore before, but so many things reminded me of my childhood in Nepal and India – the open markets, customs, food and clothes... Also, V and I weren’t there as tourists, but rather as family members. So instead of tramping around to check of guidebook recommendations, we spent most of our time visiting with family. This is an interesting way to approach a new city, diving in right past the exteriors and introductions to living rooms and family conversations.

But the whole new/familiar dynamic was also caused by the different ways I have of seeing things now as opposed to 20 years ago. I was more acutely aware of urban poverty and populations – especially coming from Ottawa (population density of 279 per sq km) to Bangalore (10,100 per sq km). I noticed the informal shacks built on roadsides, the acres of slums. Cows in the street, that wasn’t new - but an interest in broader urban issues, that certainly was. And in this regard, I could only scratch at the surface.