Bangalore sites

For more than a year I've been trying to write a novel set in Bangalore -- the southern India city that has been utterly transformed in the past ten years or so by foriegn firms' "offshore" offices and "call centers" -- without actually having had the pleasure of visiting it. In fact, I've never been to India at all; the closest I've been is Hong Kong.

One of the most helpful websites I've found is Bangalore Buzz, which aggregates (collects) news articles about Bangalore from several local, national Indian, and foreign newspapers. This site has been utterly invaluable. The articles describe the economic and socio-cultural scene, with particular attention paid to just the aspects of Bangalore I want to know about: the disruptions caused by the overwhelming changes in the city.

Then today I found something totally great: a blog about potholes in Bangalore. The potholes, road problems and infrastructure problems are emblematic of the changes in the city, as far as I can tell.

Finally, I noticed the other day that the satellite function of Google maps has recently published a much more detailed satellite view of Bangalore. Without a map it's pretty hard to fingure out what's what, but I can compare it to other online maps and find a few things.

Bangalore,
urban infrastructure,
potholes,
writing