Smell the ghee before you see the pan. Bangalore has been hiding one of India's greatest street food scenes in plain sight — and this 3-hour evening walk is your way in. Small groups only, led by a local who didn't discover these spots, but grew up at them.

We start somewhere most tourists never think to visit at dusk. Lalbagh Botanical Garden is 240 acres of living, breathing history — ancient Banyan Trees with roots like cathedral columns, dramatic Silk Cotton Trees, towering Cook Pines that have stood here longer than modern Bangalore itself, and a Glass House modelled on London's Crystal Palace. A lake so still it turns the whole sky upside down. Monkeys dart overhead. Squirrels weave between your feet. Birds are mid-chorus. Consider it food for thought — the kind that takes root slowly and stays with you long after you've left.

Then the garden gates open, and Bangalore gets serious about the other kind of hunger. The good news? You've already walked up an appetite. A congress bun pulled apart to reveal a hidden punch of spicy peanuts. Bajji tumbling out of the fryer in four varieties — pineapple, banana, chilli, potato — gone before they cool. Fresh avocado or sitaphal juice while you catch your breath. Then dose so thin you can almost see through it, slicked with white butter, alongside a holige whose jaggery filling tastes like a Sunday at your grandmother's. Northward next — peri peri paneer, pav bhaji in a cloud of butter and spice, jalebi drowning happily in rabdi alongside a soft kesar jamun. And when you think the evening is done, a spongy rasgulla and a kulfi melting faster than you can finish it.
Food for thought. Food for the soul. Food for the stomach. Bangalore delivers all three — and this evening, so do we.