Private Tour: Palaces of Bangalore

Thoroughly enjoyed my private tour of Bengaluru with Sharma my guide. She took me to many wonderful sites around Bengalore that included: Shree Dodda Ganapathi Temple, Sri Big Bull Temple, Tippu Sultan's Palace, Lalbagh Botanical Gardens, Vidhanna Soudha Karnataka State Capitol building and Bengaluru Palace. She was very knowledgeable and told great stories about each place and their history. Would highly recommend this tour especially if you can get Sharma as your tour guide! Thanks, Sharma!”

Fantastic guide in a beautiful city filled with energy and culture. The gardens were a pleasant surprise.”

Excellent tour if you are in Bangalore for a short time. In just a few hours, we were able to see some interesting palaces, gardens, markets and forts. We also enjoyed driving through the city with an excellent commentary from the guide. We learned a lot about the history of the city as well as its current growth and progress as the Silicon valley of India.”

Great tour, especially if you're pressed for time. A leisurely ~4-5 hours with knowledgeable tour guides.”

The driver and guide were both very nice and helpful. However, I was not impressed with the palaces. Be prepared to pay for you toilet and it may just be a hole in the ground...seriously.”

It was good to visit the historic sites of Bangalore. The experience could have been better if the tour guide kept us engaged with more relevant information on the points we visited.”

General comment about Bangalore that has nothing to do with this specific tour - traffic in Bangalore is bad! Think big city rush hour all day. As a result, 2 hours of this particular tour were in the car Note - tour was advertised as 5 hours but we were done in 4. This is not the tour operator's fault, it's the nature of Bangalore. Taking the tour on a Sunday morning would minimize the impact of traffic. I took this trip as an individual, and for a single person I thought the tour was overpriced for what I got in return. The prices shown on Viator's main page are From and you can only get those costs if there are multiple people in your tour group. If you have 3 or 4 people in your group this trip may be worth it. The operator was very good about email follow-up confirming hotel pickup and the driver picked me up from the hotel on time. We drove for an hour to pick up the guide. She was pretty knowledgeable and I think someone more extroverted than me would have benefited more by asking her lots more questions. After the last stop, we dropped the guide off and spent another hour getting back to the hotel. The first stop was the Karnataka stake government office building, and the high court opposite. This stop comprised of stopping by the side of the road, stepping out onto the sidewalk, getting a brief history lesson, taking a couple of photos and getting back in the car again. The next stop was the Lalbagh Gardens - these are large botanical gardens which we took a walk through this is subjective but not the best botanical gardens I've seen. If you do the tour around Republic Day in January, there is a special flower show that is interesting. The next stop was Tipu's Summer Palace. Interesting architecture but relatively small and so you see everything in about 30 minutes. The last stop was Bangalore Palace. Lots of photos and interesting things to see but still done in less than 45 minutes. Only a portion is available to see as the current Queen still lives in the rest of the Palace.”