The city name we all know as Bangalore is the anglicised version of the city's name in the local language (Kannada), 'Bengaluru'. The earliest reference to the name "Bengalooru" was found in a 9th-century Ganga Dynasty stone inscription on a "veera kallu" (literally, "hero stone", a rock edict extolling the virtues of a warrior). In this inscription "Bengaluru" is referred to as a place in which a battle was fought in 890 AD. It states that the place was part of the Ganga kingdom until 1004 AD and was known as "Bengaval-uru", the "City of Guards" in Old Kannada. On November 1, 2006, the State Government accepted a resolution to rename Bangalore to its native name, Bengaluru.
Today whenever Bangalore is mentioned it seems to be in association with leading India's amazing economic growth through Information Technology based companies such as business process outsourcing (BPO's) and call centres. Bangalore is a major driver of the Indian economy, constantly vying with
Kolkata (previously Calcutta) for the title of third largest city, and the economic success has brought about much needed improvements in facilities and entertainment available so there are many things to recommend the city as a destination for your gap year break.
There is a fusion of east meeting west due to the large number of students and graduates from all over India along with ex-pats working with multi-national companies. This has led to a change in the usual Indian culture with a proliferation of pubs, clubs and entertainment sometimes more in keeping with England than India. The state government does keep limiting these attempts to push the boundaries by enforcing closing times of midnight on all the clubs and bars in the city but hopefully they will become more lenient over time, though this does not seem to deter gap year travellers from having a wonderful time.
Bangalore has the largest number of international artists coming to play in the country with recent concerts being held by
Iron Maiden, Roger Waters, The Rolling Stones and Bryan Adams. The beauty of concerts here are the numbers are kept to 15,000 maximum so you can still have the feeling of an intimate concert rather than the usual stadium concerts we are now used to in the west.
Finally we must mention the climate here. As the city is based on the Mysore Plateau at an altitude of 920 metres it has a great climate year round. It does not get the harsh high temperatures of the rest of the country nor the humidity of the tropical south and in the winter can get quite chilly with day time temperatures of 15 degrees but with lots of sunshine and beautiful blue skies every day.