Bengaluru Days!! 🫶 Part 1

Wednesday, 1st March 2023, 6:26 pm:

We have a Bengaluru → Hyderabad train in 4 minutes. We just reached the station.

We are in a rush—running, fumbling, and trying our best not to mess up at the last minute.

And what’s running on my mind?“I HOPE I MISS THIS TRAIN SO THAT I CAN MAKE IT AN EXCUSE TO STAY HERE FOR A FEW MORE DAYS.”

Yepp, that’s how wholesome the trip was. ❤️

I planned to document stories from the trip and journal all my experiences before I slept each night. (Urgeee you to do this when you travel)

We forget many small yet beautiful moments from our vacations, and writing these details builds an archive full of memories and joy. Trust me, you can’t even recall the details from yesterday—especially if you had a busy day.

Glad I made notes of all the little things I did. Otherwise, this issue would have never happened.

I’m sharing ’em here in chronological order.Might miss the order a few times to club stories.

Little context so we both stay on the same page

I made crazy ass friends working from cafés in Hyderabad. We meet once a week to work (not really :p) and have casual, professional, personal, and stupid conversations. We call it The WFC Gang!

WFC: Work From Café. Will address my friends as Gang from now.

There was a Nocode Hackathon on 25-26th February. So we planned to attend the event and then stay for a few days to explore the city, meet people, and chill.

I stayed in Bengaluru from 24th February to 1st March. Indiranagar, to be precise.

I was superrr excited for Bengaluru coz:

• My first trip w the money I earned.

• I made awesome friends on Twitter. A few of them are from Bengaluru or have moved to the city. I was gonna meet them for the first time. Yay!!

• I was travelling with my favourite bunch of people.

That’s everything you need to know before I share my Bengaluru Days with you.

Trains and Travel

The last time I travelled by train was in 2018. The one before that was in 2008. It’s fair to say I have little to no experience in train travel, but there is always something special about trains.

Maybe how the Indian Cinema portrayed train journeys has played its role, but sharing food and late-night conversations are never overrated.

I wish I could add some videos from the train, but I’m unable to embed them. 🤦‍♂️

Hos Zostel Life

I never stayed in a hostel. Not in my school, not in my college, never.

Whenever I travelled, it was always hotels—sharing the room with 2-3 people I’ve known closely.

It was my first time sharing space with strangers or in a co-living environment, and it was totally awesome. There was newness but no discomfort.

Other folks in Zostel and peeps in my Gang who stayed in Travel Hostels before say the experience is much better in other places.

It’s because Indiranagar Zostel has silent hours post 10:30 pm, so it’s hard to create a party vibe. All we could do was have some conversations while being conscious about the pitch of our voices.

To be fair, IAS, IPS, Supreme Court Advocates, and retired Army Officers lived in our locality, so the silent hours are understandable.

I wish I could have made friends in Zostel. I was so occupied roaming around the city with my gang and friends from Twitter, I hardly spent any time in the Zostel.

I’ve had a few Hi-What’s up with you-Bye conversations and exchanged a few contacts, but I didn’t get a chance to have deeper conversations.

I don’t regret it though.

Rameshwaram Café and IDC

I’ve had South Indian breakfast all my life, and I don’t think I’ll be ever tired of it. I asked people in Bengaluru to suggest places I shouldn’t miss visiting, and one common place in everyone’s suggestions was Rameshwaram Café.

I like how simple and light the breakfast is—very similar to what I have at home, Hyderabad, but it’s got its own local flavour to it. Yummy!

Another breakfast place worth visiting was IDC (Idly, Dosa, Coffee). The trees around just make it a perfect breakfast place.

Anisha, Vibe, and HumbleBean Coffee!

It’s magical how you meet someone for the first time, and the vibe takes off. I mean, you never talked before, don’t even know each other’s stories, but you still find comfort in sharing things you otherwise wouldn’t.

The same happened with Anisha Jain.

I spoke to Anisha a couple of times on Twitter about freelancing, and that’s it! That’s all the conversation we ever had.

Turns out, I had one of the best times of the trip with Anisha—we talked about travel, hobbies, relationships, work, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, moving out, mental health, and a thousand other things.

We spoke for 3.5 hours and didn’t even realize how fast the time flew.

It’s crazy how she has many things on her hand and still manages everything.

Would have loved to met her a couple more times during the trip, but that’s okay. Next timeeee!!

I met Anisha at HumbleBean Coffee, and the place is as sexy as it can be. If you love working from cafés, you must visit this place. Try French Toast—it was pretty good.

When you love being a listener

Thanks to my profession and curiosity to talk to people, I get to meet people of different ages, domains, and vast experiences. It’s when you meet such people you realize how much you enjoy being a listener, as they always amaze you with insane stories.

Soon after Anisha, I met Abhilash at Café Muziris. He has had an interesting career, and learning what he’s building was dope. We then hopped on to lighter conversations like family, cities, food, books, etc.

Try meeting him if you’re in Bengaluru. Cool guy to talk to.

Café was decent. I wouldn’t *highly* recommend it, but you can just check it out if you want to. Food was good though—had fries, sandwich, and chocolate cake.

Potato Pizza? WTFFF!!

It was around 7:30 pm that I said my goodbyes to Abilash and booked an OLA to meet Renuka, a friend from school who works in Bengaluru.

She was already with Sreekar, another friend from school, a freelance writer, and a member of the Ganggg. (This is as formal as an intro can get, lol)

So yeah, Next Stop: Brik Oven, Whitefield.

I reached the place in 40 minutes. We ordered some pizzas, and talked about school days, how life is treating us, and of course, food and movies.

Shit, I almost forgot. So Sreekar ordered some weird pizza with a weird name—what came was a potato version of paneer pizza 👀. I wonder who eats it.

But if you want to check out Brik Oven, non-veg pizzas and milkshakes are good.

(Loll, this is starting to sound like a food blog)

Okayy, this is getting a lot longer than I thought. So I’m breaking it down into three parts.

The first part ends here. You’ll read the other two issues on Wednesday and Sunday.

See ya soon!

Love,Vikra.