Bangalore (all images)

Located in the centre of southern India, in the heart of the Mysore plateau at an altitude of 920m, Bangalore is the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka and has 6.2 million inhabitants. Its official name is Bengaluru, with Bangalore being the anglicised version of it. Due to its high elevation Bangalore enjoys a mild climate throughout the year, one of the best climates in south Asia. The city was founded in 1537, when Kempe Gowda I built a mud-brick fort and established the site as a province of the imperial Vijayanagara Empire. Nowadays Bangalore is a major economic centre and an important high tech hub, due to the large number of IT, biotech, high tech and manufacturing companies located there. The city of Bangalore itself does not offer too much in terms of tourist attractions. In fact, tourists mainly use Bangalore as a gateway to access the interesting sites in Karnataka and Kerala. Bangalore suffers from its own economic success, as its streets were never built to cope with today's huge amount of traffic.