Blissfully basking in the beauty of Bangalore…

Welcome to beautiful Bangalore. I hope you will enjoy the journey as Padma and I travel through three states of India over the next three weeks…
For the last few days Bangalore has been affected by a cyclone off the east coast of India. Thunderstorms and heavy rain have lashed the city all week. It was still raining when we arrived last night. Luckily for us the clouds parted and we had a dry, sunny day of bliss in Bangalore today.
We are staying at the divine St. Mark’s Hotel which I will tell you more about in following posts.
We are only staying one day in Bangalore this trip. How will we get our mountain of shopping done in one day! We hire a taxi driven by the sweet Rama Krishna. He is so happy, speaks great English and is right on the ball with directions.

Our first stop is one of our favourites…the tasteful Raintree. An old colonial bungalow that now houses some wonderful boutiques…it is a must for all shop-a-holics. It houses Anokhi and Ritu Kumar, for ladies fashion, as well as the extremely beautiful Amripalli jewels. All the shops are filled with great fashion.

Next we scooted off to the Orange Bicycle boutique. It was choc full of boho chic clothing, knick knacks and fabbo gifts. Pictured are the cute pot plant people found outside.

You can find Orange Bicycle at House no: 3353,5th Cross Street, 12th “A” Main, Indiranagar. There is also lots of high end fashion around this area.

Our next destination was the Leela Galleria at the Leela Palace Hotel. There is a small shopping area here. We had a beautiful lunch at Cha Bar (more to follow). The Palace houses Anokhi, Oxford Bookstore and Hidesign (lovely leather goods).
Then we did three department stores in a row…phew…Bangalore Central, Lifestyle and Shopper Stop.
Our last shop for the day was at Good Earth. This is a mega divine shop selling everything from clothing, candles and just tasteful home goods in general. Padma loves this shop so much…I nearly always have to drag her away.

Good Earth is located in the UB City Mall. UB City Mall is home to very high end retailers like Jimmy Choo etc…but don’t let that put you off going there because Good Earth is very reasonable.