Bengaluru Days!! 🫶 Part 2
This is my third visit to the city, but I fell in love with it for the first time
I feel I’m doing a lot of Bengaluru these days on my feed. I need to wrap this up asap before it becomes annoying to my audience on social media, lol.
Before you read this issue, do read Part 1 to get a clear context of where the second part is coming from.
Andddd, we continue!
The most tragic day of all!!
After having a fabulous first day, I had an equally bad day two.
We (Gang) made a move to the hackathon. It was a twenty-four-hour event (12 pm-12 pm.)
We thought it’s gonna be fun meeting people, building stuff, and having conversations different from work.
But the vibe was different at the event.
Honestly, it felt more like an examination hall—we were not allowed to leave the building, and a collaborative, conversational environment was not built. With all this vibe, I lost interest in building at the hackathon.
So I decided to leave the event.
In all fairness, if it was a 6-7 hour event or if the 24-hour event was in Hyderabad, I would have stayed and tried to enjoy the event.
But I’m in Bengaluru—my time here is limited. I don’t want to spend a second on places, people, and tasks I don’t want to be a part of.
My friend Sreekar and I approached the hackathon team and asked if we could leave because something important had come up. We left the event and came back to the Zostel. This was around 4 pm.
It got worse from here.
I tried to make plans with friends, and it didn’t happen. I thought of roaming around solo. It didn’t happen either.
All day, I was at Zostel, doing nothing.
It made me upset because I didn’t come all the way from Hyderabad to just sit in a hostel. I want to see places and meet people.
The day ended well though.
Ibrahim (another Gang member) walked out of the event and joined us in the hostel. For the next two hours, we were bitching about the event, talking about building communities and all other stuff that includes people and activities.
NGL, boys bitch better than girls.
Dubeji and Cubbon Park
Mitesh Dube and Meena Indora hold a special place in my heart—These are the first people I made friends from Twitter. After my first 7-8 months of content creation, I realized making friends is a thousand folds valuable than so-called networking. The journey on Twitter never felt lonely after that.
My biggest regret from the trip is I couldn't meet Meena—the person I blocked the entire day to spend time with along with Mitesh.
Good part? I met Mitesh.
After my not-so-good second day, Mitesh and I met at Cubbon Park on Sunday morning.
The park is sexier than it looks in the pictures—perfect for mornings!
Mitesh and I spoke for two hours, walked around the park, watched dogs play, and then visited State Central Library before we left for breakfast at IDC.
Mitesh said, “We’ll take a picture later”, and I shouldn’t have listened to him. 👀
Because now I don’t a have a picture with him!! (It’s not important for me as a person, but as a creator, yes :p)
I met him again in the evening at a creator meet-up for 10-15 minutes; that was the last time I saw him.
Managed to click this picture though 👇
We meet again, Vanshita
Again, I met someone with whom I’ve had the least interactions and yet somehow managed to pull off amazing conversations and quality time.
Vanshita Agarwal and I have followed each other for a long time, and all the information we had about each other was via tweets and IG stories.
Honestly, I didn’t even know she lives in Bengaluru until she replied to some random tweet which happened to pop up on my feed
Vanshita is the person I met the most during the trip. 4 times if I remember correctly.
We met at the creator event for 10 minutes (in fact she hosted the event), then we were scheduled to meet for breakfast the next day. We had breakfast and she invited me to meet Saloni and Tushar in the evening—lovely folks to talk to.
The next day, I was visiting Prado, and Vanshita was interested too. So I asked her to join. When we met, she literally said, “Here we meet again.”
It’s only then I realized, “Oh, yes. We did meet a good number of times.”
Vanshita is all heart and one of the sweetest people I have ever met. We went on tangents with many topics and probably discussed all of our major life events in the last decade. With roaming around the street late at night, visiting some crazy cafés, and unlimited talks, Vanshita did make my Bengaluru trip memorable.
Of all places I’ve been with her, Bistro Claytopia is the one I recommend to people reading this. It’s a great place if you’re meeting someone for the first time—especially if you’re unsure what conversations to have.
They allow you to paint your own pottery, helping you bond over art. Loved how they integrated art and food.
So that’s all about meeting Vanshita.
Good news is she’s visiting Hyderabad real soon, and I can’t wait to show her around.
Church Street has life!!
DLF in Hyderabad, Mall Road in Manali, and now Church Street in Bengaluru—streets I’ve been to that brought the soul of the city to life.
I visited Church Street twice—once alone and one time with the Gang.
I loved the solo exploration where I was talking to strangers randomly—sometimes about Bengaluru, sometimes about the street, and sometimes about what’s up with their lives.
There is Brigade Road adjacent to Church Street—again, pretty awesome city vibe. Try Bombay Kadak Chai in INDIA Chai if you ever visit Brigade Road. Too sexy.
Also, visit the Samsung Opera House (Vanshita took me here.) Samsung renovated an Opera House and made it into its store. I’m sure it did some good to Samsung’s branding.
I end Part 2 here.
In the next issue, I will share why The WFC Gang is special—plus the stupid stuff we did together, all the other places I visited, and the top places I recommend if you’re in Bengaluru.
See ya!