Itinerary for Bangalore, Goa, and Mumbai in India

Today I want to share my India travel itinerary for Bangalore, Goa, and Mumbai with you. These places are great to visit on a trip to Southeast Asia. I’ll show you why.

Itinerary for Bangalore, Goa, and Mumbai

Last month I took a whirlwind trip through India. I saw the sights in the Golden Triangle, visited the Taj Mahal at sunrise, explored Rajasthan, and went searching for tigers in Ranthambore National Park.

It was an amazing experience, except for one thing: I only got to see a tiny part of the vast, diverse country that is India.

Problem solved. Last week my boyfriend and I spent five days in India in order to see more of the country. After three unbelievably relaxing days in the Maldives, we headed north to start our itinerary for Bangalore, Goa, and Mumbai.

Bangalore

Our hotel in Bangalore, the ITC Windsor, was a gorgeous old palace surrounded by leafy palms and jungle plants.

It struck me as soon as we arrived that the vegetation in this part of India was vastly different from that of Rajasthan.

It fit my admittedly preconceived notions of India’s jungle-like climate much more closely than had its Rajasthani counterpart.

We checked into our room at the ITC Windsor and were conveniently upgraded to an enormous suite on the third floor.

After settling in with a complimentary bottle of champagne, we headed downstairs for happy hour in the gorgeous old library, which was full of overstuffed leather sofas, portraits of beturbaned men, and dark green wallpaper.

Sufficiently full of wine and salty snacks, we headed off to dinner in Bangalore. We only had one night in town, and we wanted to make the most of it.

The food at Malgudi was excellent. The server even took care to preemptively tell the kitchen to tone down the spiciness for our weak Western palates, so my mouth was only half on fire as I ate my fill of vegetable kabobs.

It showed me yet another difference between my two India trip experiences: the food was spicy in Rajasthan, but the food was off-the-charts spicy in Bangalore.

Goa

The next morning we were up at 4am to continue our itinerary for Bangalore, Goa, and Mumbai with a flight to Goa. We arrived just as the sun was rising.

A driver took us to The Leela, our hotel in Cavelossim. The hour drive wound us through dense jungle full of palm trees.

Old Portuguese townhouses mingled with new developments as we drove towards our beachside destination.

Once again I was struck by how different it was from my Rajasthan experience, where Hindu temples and Muslim mosques sat in dry, arid land.

Here it was all tropics, and the Portuguese Catholic legacy was alive and well in the whitewashed churches nestled among the palms.

Upon arrival at The Leela we were given a flower lei and a bindi on our foreheads, then offered a fresh coconut with a straw sticking out the top.

Everywhere we went we were greeted by huge koi ponds and bright pink bougainvillea, as well as tropical flowers and flocks of snowy white egrets.

The yellow sand of the beach stretched out as the ocean waves lapped at the shore, and the green of the lawns was fresh and dewy in the morning sun. The coral-colored buildings looked perfect among it all.

We settled into our room, which overlooked a koi pond with a small rocky promontory upon which was perched a flock of egrets.

From there we went to the beach, where we spent the remainder of our two days in Goa, save for meals and sleep.

Mumbai

On our second night in Goa we waved good-bye to The Leela and headed north to continue our itinerary for Bangalore, Goa, and Mumbai in India’s bustling megalopolis.

We were staying at another ITC hotel, which was once again generous enough to upgrade us to an even more ginormous suite than the one in Bangalore.

As we walked into our suite at the ITC Maratha Mumbai Airport, we were greeted by a bottle of wine, savory namak para snacks, and tiny chocolate muffins.

We dutifully consumed them all as soon as the watchful eyes of the woman who escorted us to our room were diverted.

It was late when we arrived in Mumbai, so dinner that night was at one of the hotel restaurants, Peshawri. The food was excellent, particularly the a dish with vegetable rounds filled with dried plums.

We finished off our dinner with a drink at the bar, where we were serenaded by live music as we sipped our martinis.

The next day we packed in a full eight hours of sightseeing in Mumbai. After heading down Marine Drive, a coastal boulevard full of couples taking strolls along its broad seaside promenade, our driver suddenly pulled over on an overpass.

“Get out and look over the edge,” he said. My boyfriend and I peered over the guard rail to find ourselves face-to-face with Mumbai’s dirty laundry. Quite literally.

We were overlooking the washing ghats, where all the laundry in Mumbai was being soaked, scrubbed, slapped against the concrete, and slung over a line to dry. It was fascinating to watch.

Laundry done, we headed to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, or Victoria Terminus (VT) as it was formerly known.

These days, it’s even better known as the fateful train station where the main character of Slumdog Millionaire kept missing the love of his life.

When we arrived, I was amazed it took over an hour to drive from our hotel to VT. It was a far cry from Delhi, the largest city I visited on my last trip to India, in which I never spent more than 20 minutes in a car at any given time.

Once at VT, we explored the beautiful heritage building, musing at how there were still busts of old dead Englishmen lining the facade and getting yelled at by a guard while trying to read the UNESCO World Heritage Site plaque.

We continued our tour of the station, going through the interior to look at all the trains and holding ourselves back from breaking into the dance from the end of Slumdog Millionaire (really, nobody wanted to see that).

Moving on from VT, we headed to the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly the easier-for-Westerners-to-pronounce Prince of Wales Museum).

This Mumbai museum houses collections of Indian sculpture, painting, decorative art, weapons, and armor, as well as a natural history museum full of decaying taxidermied tigers and leopards.

From the museum we went to the Gateway of India, a giant triumphal arch on the waterfront. It’s best known for being the departure point of the last British soldiers upon Indian independence.

Across the street from the Gateway of India was the even more massive Taj Mahal Palace hotel, one of the most famous hotels in Mumbai.

At the suggestion of a friend, we walked from the Taj to Leopold Cafe for lunch.

While the restaurant was full of foreign tourists, it more than made up for its lack of locals with its great food. My tandoori mushroom dish was amazing, as were my boyfriend’s chicken kabobs.

After lunch we walked around Colaba for a while before heading back up north to Juhu Beach. Another friend had suggested we go to an outdoor beach bar frequented by young people in Mumbai.

Looking at the crowd, which had foregone Indian dress for Western clothing and was enjoying shisha while sharing good conversation, it once again struck me how different Mumbai was from the more traditional cities I had visited in Rajasthan.