Bengaluru walks for food, photography and bungalows

It’s often said that the best way to explore any city is on foot. And that goes for Bengaluru as well, the city’s infamous lack of pavements notwithstanding. The city’s walk culture has evolved dramatically in the past few years and has something for everyone — whether you’re interested in heritage, parks, food or photography. It doesn’t matter where you’re from either — you could be a tourist, an expat, someone who’s moved here from another city in India, or even a long-time resident of Bengaluru looking to get a new perspective on the city.
“Unlike Mumbai or Kolkata, Bengaluru doesn’t have that much by way of monuments. I used to conduct tours in Delhi and when I came back here, I found that I didn’t know much about Kempe Gowda and what he had done for the city. So I did a lot of research and came up with several ideas to do walks here,” says Mansoor Ali, founder of a walking tour company that conducts walks for everything from heritage and food, to sari-shopping tours in Chickpet and a Malgudi Days bungalow walk in which they take people through old bungalows in Malleswaram and Basavangudi.
The idea behind walks, says Poornima Dasharathi of a walking tour company known for starting pete walks in the city, is to make people more aware of Bengaluru, no matter where their interests lie. “We have heritage walks for people who’d like to hear a story about the city; the food walks are for foodies who want to explore the city through their primary interest,” she says. They also do themed city tours, such as the Medieval Bangalore Trail (Bangalore Fort, Kempe Gowda Fort, Tipu Sultan’s Summer Palace, Avenue Road and City Market), a Rural Charms Trail (Gavi Gangadhareshwara, Dodda Ganesh temple and Bull Temple) and a South Indian Culture Trail (a walk through Malleswaram that takes walkers to iconic eateries, temples, old bungalows and Sampige Road).
A key element of these walks is photography. But for those purely into the art, there are photography walks in which gyaan on heritage, food and the culture in the city come second to a passion for capturing these subjects on a camera. Case in point: A nine-hour 25km photowalk in which a group of photographers visited all four Kempe Gowda Towers in Ulsoor, Lal Bagh, Gavipuram and Mekhri Circle, but did not necessarily take pictures of only the towers. Photographer Peevee, who has been part of this and several other photography walks in the city, says, “Our intention is only to shoot photographs and not to learn about food, heritage or buildings. We will visit a place — say, a city market, churches in the Cantonment area, Brigade Road or VV Puram food street — and spend an hour or two there at most. Sometimes we visit a place like a market in the morning and go back in the evening when the light is interesting and the place is buzzing with activity. We then share these pictures online and the conversation continues long after the walk is over.”