🇳🇱 Eindhoven → 🇮🇳 Bengaluru · 2 weeks

Lalbagh Botanical Garden: arrive before 8 AM on a weekday when entry is free and the garden belongs to morning walkers and parakeets. The 200-year-old glass house (modelled on London's Crystal Palace) is the centrepiece, but the real find is the enormous rock formation in the south-east corner — one of the oldest exposed rock surfaces on earth.

Toit brewery in Indiranagar put Bengaluru craft beer on the map — get there for their afternoon happy hour on weekdays. Then walk to Arbor Brewing Company a few streets away for the contrast: same neighbourhood, completely different beer menu. Bengaluru has over 80 breweries so this barely scratches the surface.

Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace is quietly spectacular and almost always uncrowded — a two-storey entirely wooden Indo-Islamic structure with ornately painted arches and teak columns. Go on a weekday morning (opens 10 AM, foreigners INR 200) and you may have the upper floor almost to yourself.

Drive to Nandi Hills for sunrise: leave Bengaluru at 4 AM to reach this 1,478-metre hilltop by 5:30 AM. On clear October–March mornings the valley below fills with mist and the sunrise over the Deccan plateau is extraordinary. Weekdays only — weekends the roads become bumper-to-bumper from 5 AM.