I’m just back from a 10 day trip to India, where I spent 8 days in Bangalore and 2 days in Delhi. I would love to say I went out to find myself or something similar, but in reality it was a work trip to visit a customer for my very non-photography related day job in telecoms.
This was only my second time in India, my first being a short 3 day trip to Bangalore in 2023. My last visit was to attend a 2 day workshop with the same customer, and as it was so short I didn’t really get a chance to see anything. So, with all that said, this was my first chance to really see something in India. I would say I’m a fairly experienced traveller, I have visited a few other Eastern countries for both personal and business travel over the years, including China, Thailand, and Vietnam, and some things I saw in India definitely reminded me of these.
It was a 10 hour flight from London Heathrow to Bangalore International airport. I don’t know what the crew were thinking as we took off at 10pm and they server dinner about midnight. You might think this is to help us align with India time but midnight in the UK is 4:30am in India, so the only thing it achieved was to stop everyone sleeping. I arrived in Bangalore airport at about lunch time after 3 hours sleep and was pretty exhausted, but the first thing I had to do was find a taxi and head straight to the office for meetings.
From my experience taxi rides in India range from a little bit scary to really wondering if you will make it there alive scary. There seem to be no rules on the road, everyone is honking their horns, squeezing in little gaps in traffic, making another lane, and generally driving as fast as possible without hitting anyone. If you have only lived in or visited the US and Europe then the driving might come as a bit of a shock to you, but it is surprising how fast you get used to it. Taxis are also very cheap, a 40 minute ride from the airport cost me around 1000 Rupees, or about £8.50/$11.50. For reference, in the UK a 5 minute taxi ride from the train station to my house costs me a bit more than that.
Bangalore is a huge city with an equally huge population of around 8 million people. That is the same population as London, and Bangalore is only the 5th biggest city in India. There are so many things to see in the city, but of course my main reason for visiting India was for work, and so I spent several days where I would go to meetings all day then dine with colleagues and customers until it was time to go back to the hotel to sleep.
Evening Walk
One evening we returned earlier than usual to the hotel and I managed to get out for a walk around to explore. My hotel was in a busy residential area with plenty of small shops and restaurants around. Plenty of things caught my eye on this walk, the whole environment is so different to where I live, the traffic, the streets, the shops, basically everything. From my experience the people in India are just like the people I have met from most other countries, smart, welcoming, well turned out and friendly, so it makes me wonder what exactly leads to the differences in the environment. For example, there is no consideration for pedestrians, with paths randomly shut or covered in piles of bricks, making you walk in the road and dodge the cars and motorbikes. To go along with this the drivers don’t seem to follow any rules at all but somehow seem to get where they are going fine. Perhaps it is some subtle difference in mentality or a lack of enforcement of the rules, I really don’t know the answer.
I have several digital and film cameras but as I wasn’t sure how safe it would be so I only took along my trusty Nikon D5100 APS-C camera that I bought new in 2011. I didn’t want to take too many lenses with me, or keep swapping them over, so I picked up a used Nikon DX 18-140mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR lens from MPB for my main travel lens and also packed my AF-S DX 35mm f1.8 prime for low light shooting. This camera is only 16 megapixels but that is more than enough for most purposes. I have taken this camera to places all around the world, including Europe, Australia, and Vietnam, and have printed quite a few shots from it with no trouble. My main camera now is a Fuji X-T3, but one of my primes for that is worth more than the whole Nikon setup combined and I didn’t want to risk it in case anything went wrong.
A Busy Saturday
In my first free day in Bangalore I made the most of the time by going for another walk near my hotel in the morning before heading out to the Nandi Hills with colleagues.
The Nandi Hills is a fort and summer retreat that has been in use since the 11th century. Due to the height the weather is significantly cooler than in Bangalore and today it is surrounded by quite a few high end hotels and resorts. We visited the peak of the hill at almost 1500m (4,900 ft) where there is a historical fort, a Hindu temple (that we could not take photos inside), and various view points to take in the expansive views over the surrounding countryside.
In the evening we headed off to the Adiyogi Shiva Bust, the largest bust statue in the world. The Adiyogi statue is at the Isha Yoga Center that is led by Sadhguru, someone who seems to have a huge following around the world but I was totally unaware of. There was a light and sound show that lasted around 20 minutes, but considering we sat in almost 2 hours of traffic to get in and the same to get out I’m not convinced it was worth it unless you have more of a connection to Hinduism than I do.
Daytime Walk
This part of Bangalore was so vibrant and busy. The three young men in posing in one of the shots asked me to take their photo, I was happy to oblige and shared my Instagram handle with them to see the shot. I don’t know very much about Islam but I understand they were taking part in a religious festival that involves sacrificing sheep, you can see they are using a torch to remove the hair from a sheep’s head and feet. I have no idea what else this involves so if you know feel free to let me know in the comments.
While in general the streets are not in the best state, they are generally fairly clean except for a few areas where rubbish seems to be dumped. The dogs that are roaming free like to have a dig through this looking for food.
Nandi Hills
The Nandi hills were quite a long taxi journey from Bangalore, around 70km (45 miles) to the north of the city. It was a popular area for visitors and we saw plenty of people both on the roads and hiking alone the roads as they climb higher up the hill. At the top there is a part that you pay to enter, containing the historical fort, view points, and the Hindu temple. Plastic water bottles are banned from the site and they searched everybody’s bags as we went in to make sure.
Monkeys roamed free in the site but luckily they have not become too accustomed to being fed by visitors, meaning they haven’t developed the habit of stealing items to swap for food! I might have gone a bit over the top with photos of monkeys but they are a novelty for me.
Adiyogi Shiva Bust
Sunday Exploring
On our free Sunday a colleague and I went exploring in Bangalore and visited a number of places including Bangalore Palace, the Botanical Gardens, Bangalore Fort, and a busy street market.
The Palace and Botanical Gardens had no photography rules that seemed to be focussed on people doing photo shoots rather than taking snapshots, but I was asked to put away my camera before going into the gardens. From some of the signs in the gardens it seems they previously had trouble with too many people coming there for portrait shoots for Instagram, and I guess in a city with 8 million people anything that gets popular will be a problem!
As I mentioned earlier, taxis are pretty cheap so we mostly got around in Uber taxis, but also used the Metro trains when we had the opportunity. The metro was very cheap, a ticket was the equivalent of around £0.40 (maybe $0.50), so if it goes where you need this is even cheaper than taking an Uber.
The Bangalore Palace was interesting to visit but do make sure you take the audio guide as there are no labels on the hundreds of photos and objects around the palace. As a foreigner I had to pay a higher price for the ticket than an Indian citizen, I think it was around £10 but this is not really expensive compared to the attractions in London.
Not so many shots today. I did take quite a few, especially in the street market, but I didn’t get that many that I really liked. I was trying to be a bit subtle when taking shots as I don’t know what people in India generally think about being photographed in the street.
After this I had a few more days in Bangalore but wasn’t able to get out shooting. I then flew to Delhi for 2 days but the temperature was ridiculous (above 40C) so I didn’t get a chance to see much at all. I tried to go for a walk one evening but it was so uncomfortable I gave up after about 20 minutes.
After my 2 days in New Delhi it was time to return to the UK. The flight was pleasant enough, and I got chatting with a young woman who was returning to the UK after 9 months travelling around Asia, something I wish I had been organised/motivated enough to do when I was younger. Unfortunately, the same day I was flying back with Air India there was a crash with only 1 survivor, involving the same type of plane that was just taking off to fly to the UK from another part of India. I saw this extremely sad news when we were already in the air, and of course this makes you think about life and family even more than normal. Before going on this sort of adventure again I do need to check on various insurances to make sure my family would be taken care of should the worst happen, as anything could happen and it would change their lives forever.
Let me know if you recommend any places to visit in India. I will probably be going back to Bangalore next year, so if there is anything interesting or photogenic nearby then hopefully I can squeeze in a visit!
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