I have made a slight change to my itinerary, bumping my return date home by six days. When I planned India, I built in six days of completely unscheduled time — no flights, trains, hotels, etc. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do after Mumbai.
My early return is motivated by my need to work on my book before its due date and the fact that Asia is more exhausting than Europe and I’d rather have five "really good weeks" than six "pretty good but super tiring" weeks.
What this means is that after Mumbai I’m probably going to New Delhi, hang around there, and then fly direct to Hong Kong, and then out. Unfortunately I have tons of Bangalore and Hyderabad contacts. My sense my next trip to India will be "strictly business" and it would be better to just focus on meetings in the southern IT cities. This trip will be mostly tourism, and Delhi has more tourism than Bangalore or Hyderabad.
I haven’t made a firm decision so if you have any experience in these cities I’m all ears.
I was in Bangalore late last year for a conference, and was hoping to do some touring around the city on my time off. It’s pretty boring. It might have a thriving IT sector, but it’s a dearth of cultural attractions. Given that you’re travelling in other parts of India, I wouldn’t feel bad at all in skipping Bangalore.
Honestly, Ben, close your eyes, take a deep breath and whichever city’s name appears in your heart, go there.
Try not to avoid thinking it through.