There are some cities you visit for their monuments. Some you remember for their weather, their people or the photographs you bring back.

And then there are cities you remember by their smell.

Pune is one of them.

Spend a morning walking through the old Camp area and you will notice that the city has a particular way of making you hungry. The smell of freshly baked bread drifts out of old shops. There is butter in the air, the sweetness of biscuits behind glass counters and, somewhere down the road, the unmistakable aroma of potatoes being turned into crisp, golden wafers.

I had come looking for old bakeries. What I found instead was a little piece of Pune’s history.

My first stop was Royal Bakery.

There is something wonderfully unhurried about stepping into an old bakery. Unlike modern cafés designed to make you sit for hours with a laptop, places like Royal seem to have one simple purpose: bake, sell and send people home with something delicious.

Royal Bakery’s history goes back to 1914, and its story is closely linked with Pune’s old Irani community. More than a hundred years later, the bakery still carries that sense of continuity.

What struck me was not simply the food. It was the feeling of entering a place that has outlived several generations of customers.

Think about that for a moment.

Someone could have walked into this bakery a hundred years ago, ordered something, paid at the counter and walked out onto the same broad streets of Camp. Generations later, we are still doing almost exactly the same thing.

That is what makes old food establishments so fascinating. Their real product is not only what is on the shelf. It is memory.

From Royal, I continued towards Kayani Bakery, one of Pune’s most recognisable names.

If you have grown up in Pune, or even visited the city often, chances are someone has asked you to bring back a box of Kayani biscuits.

Kayani Bakery was established in 1955 by the Kayani brothers, who came to Pune from Iran. The bakery became famous for its biscuits, particularly the much-loved Shrewsbury biscuit.

The first bite is almost a lesson in simplicity.

It is buttery, crumbly and delicate. Nothing about it is trying too hard. There are no elaborate toppings or dramatic presentation tricks. It is just a biscuit that has been made well for a very long time.

And perhaps that is why people keep returning.

In a world where food businesses are constantly reinventing themselves, there is something comforting about finding a place that knows exactly what it wants to be.

Kayani has also retained the character of its original establishment, including its traditional baking methods. Its association with wood-fired ovens adds another layer to the experience.

Standing there, I found myself thinking about how dramatically the food business has changed. Today, we talk about artisanal bread, heritage recipes, slow baking and traditional techniques as if they are new discoveries.

Old bakeries have been doing many of these things all along.

My next stop was Budhani Waferwala, and this was where my bakery trail took a deliciously crunchy turn.

Because Pune’s food history isn’t only about bread and biscuits.

Sometimes it is about wafers.

Budhani has been making wafers for generations, and the packets have become almost inseparable from the city’s snack culture. There is something wonderfully democratic about a packet of wafers. You don’t need a special occasion. You don’t need a reservation. You don’t even need to be particularly hungry.

Open the packet and you will probably finish more than you intended.

The crunch is familiar, uncomplicated and deeply satisfying.

And that, I realised, was the common thread running through all three places.

Royal Bakery is about continuity. Kayani is about craftsmanship and migration. Budhani is about an everyday snack becoming part of a city’s collective memory.

None of these places needs to shout about its heritage.

Their history is already sitting there—in the old shopfronts, the recipes, the ovens, the families behind the counters and the customers who keep coming back.

There is also something beautiful about the fact that these establishments have remained closely associated with particular locations rather than becoming faceless chains spread across every neighbourhood.

You have to come to them.

You have to walk the old streets.

You have to stand in a queue, watch the counter, carry the packet yourself and eat it somewhere along the way.

That is when food becomes travel.

Pune’s Camp area has changed, of course. The city around these establishments has grown, modernised and reinvented itself many times. Yet these old food businesses have managed to remain part of the everyday life of the city.

Perhaps that is the real meaning of food heritage.

It isn’t something preserved behind glass.

It is something people continue to eat.

A grandmother buys the same biscuits she once bought for her children. A parent brings home a packet of wafers. A visitor carries a box of biscuits back to another city. Somewhere along the way, a recipe becomes a memory, and the memory becomes a tradition.

By the time I finished my little bakery trail, I realised I hadn’t really been looking for the “best” bakery in Pune.

That would miss the point.

I was looking for stories.

And Pune has plenty of them.

Some are baked in ovens. Some are packed into paper bags. Some are carried home in biscuit boxes.

And some stay with you long after the last crumb is gone.

If you want to understand old Pune, don’t only visit its famous landmarks.

Walk its streets. Follow the smell of baking bread. Stop at the old counters. Buy something you have never tried before. And let the city tell you its story, one bite at a time.