Pune, India — The city that keeps arguing with itselfPune, India — The city that keeps arguing with itselfPune, India — The city that keeps arguing with itselfPune, India — The city that keeps arguing with itself

Destination · India

Pune, India

The city that keeps arguing with itself

A Maratha capital turned university town turned tech hub, still working out which version of itself it wants to be.

11 chapters ahead

Climate

Warm and dry most of the year, with a proper monsoon from June through September that turns everything briefly, intensely green.

Best season

October through February — the heat has broken, the city is awake, and the jacarandas haven't started yet.

Atmosphere

  • urban-midsize
  • colonial-layered
  • cosmopolitan
  • culinary
  • literary
  • spiritual
  • early-rising
  • artsy
  • lush

The chapters

11 ways to get lost here

Pune misal pav street food

Chapter 01

The city that feeds its students first

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Pune Shaniwar Wada fortress walls

Chapter 02

Where the Peshwas built their quiet power

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Pune Koregaon Park tree-lined street

Chapter 03

Osho's ashram outlasted the controversy

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Konkan coast fishing village beach

Chapter 04

The Konkan coast is three hours away

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Pune morning street walkers

Chapter 05

Mornings here belong to the walkers

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Pune cantonment colonial bungalow

Chapter 06

The cantonment still runs on its own clock

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Pune street mural folk art

Chapter 07

The art lives outside the gallery walls

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Pune Ganesh Chaturthi procession crowd

Chapter 08

Ten days that stop the city entirely

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Pune university campus building

Chapter 09

The universities made this city argumentative

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Pune IT park modern office building

Chapter 10

The tech money arrived and rewrote the edges

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Pune old neighborhood street life

Chapter 11

Berlin also runs on students and reinvention

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Keep wandering

You’ve finished Pune. Where next?

Pull a thread at random, fall into the world map, or step back to the front door for the latest dispatches.

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