🇮🇳 India
Bangalore
Bengaluru (Bangalore — the capital of Karnataka state and the third largest city in India, population 12.5 million in the city, 13.2 million in the urban agglomeration) is the technology capital of India and one of the fastest-growing cities in the world. Often called the "Silicon Valley of India" (Bengaluru hosts the Indian operations of virtually every major technology company in the world: Infosys (founded here in 1981), Wipro, Biocon, as well as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Intel and 400+ startups)), Bangalore is also the city with the most pleasant climate in India (altitude 920m above sea level on the Deccan Plateau gives it a year-round spring climate: average temperature 20–28°C with no extreme heat even in summer — the reason the British East India Company chose Bangalore as its garrison city, as the climate was "tolerably European"). The city's history predates the tech boom by centuries: the Mysore Maharajas' palace complex (Bangalore Palace — a Tudor-Gothic extravaganza), the Lalbagh Botanical Garden (established by Hyder Ali in 1760, now with the largest collection of tropical plants in Asia), the Vidhana Soudha (the state legislature — the most grandiose government building in independent India, built 1956 in "neo-Dravidian" style). Bangalore is also the craft beer capital of India (the first microbreweries in India opened in Bangalore in the 2000s), the center of South Indian filter coffee culture, and the home of the idli-vada-sambhar-chutney breakfast tradition that is Bengaluru's morning ritual.