Experiential Culture Tour of Bangalore

Select a 4-hour or 8-hour tour when you book. Then, meet your guide and group of no more than 15 in central Bangalore. Your guide will listen to your group’s interests, and tailor the itinerary around your shared wishes, evolving and improvising your experience on the spot if need be.

Perhaps take a drive around some colonial-era buildings, old roads, and parliamentary districts before discovering off-the-beaten track gems such as scrapyards where inventive programs are helping Bangalore’s poor. 

Stop for breakfast (own expense) at a Snake Temple, explore alleyways to see arts, crafts, and religious activities; stroll through food markets; and maybe gossip with locals over tea and coffee (own expense) at an old café.

Other options include exploring a farmer’s market, viewing a Sikh temple or Kali temple in the heart of a Hindu cemetery, or seeing Bangalore’s oldest church and the scrapyard behind it where dubious car parts are traded.

For those interested in art and crafts, perhaps visit a local pottery village to try pottery-making, or a cartoon gallery where artists capture Bangalore in caricatures.

If you’ve chosen the full-day tour, stop for lunch in a traditional Karnataka tasting room or at an authentic local family home (both own expense).

Other possible activities include visiting a women’s empowerment project in Bangalore’s slums, block printing a silk scarf, or watching a rangoli street artist creating delicate pavement patterns from rice and flowers.

Alternatively, call at Bangalore’s famous Bull Temple or an ISKCON (Hare Krishna) temple, or maybe have your future told by a parakeet-aided astrologer. Perhaps finish with some souvenir shopping, scouting out saris, silks, or other goods at some of the city’s best markets.

When it’s time, your tour ends at the original departure point.