Easy
Watch a play at Ranga Shankara
A JP Nagar theatre that puts on a play most days of the week, with cheap tickets.
Sidequest of the day
Everything else
Small things, odd things, a few hard things. No sign-up to start. Tap Done when you have done one.
Surprise me
- Easy
Visit Someshwara Temple, then circle Ulsoor Lake
One of the oldest temples in the city sits a short walk from a big lake that few people use.
- Easy
The repair pilgrimage
Take one broken thing (umbrella, chappal, watch, zip) to a street repair-wala instead of replacing it. Watch the entire fix. Tip double.
- Easy
Walk a full lap of Sankey Tank at dusk
A lake path between Malleshwaram and Sadashivanagar, full of walkers and quiet once the light goes.
- Easy
Play with the machines at the Visvesvaraya museum
A science museum on Kasturba Road where adults can press buttons without kids judging.
- Easy
Last metro home
Ride the final metro of the night just to watch who else is on it and how empty the city looks from the viaduct.
- Easy
The banana economy
Buy a banana from the vendor stationed next to a street cow, and feed the cow. You've just participated in one of the city's oldest micro-businesses.
- Easy
Read a book in silence with strangers
Cubbon Reads gets a few hundred people to sit on mats in Cubbon Park and read without talking.
- Easy
Tender coconut, full protocol
Drink it, then ask the vendor to split it and carve you a spoon from the shell for the malai. If you didn't eat the malai, it doesn't count.
- Easy
Overbridge nature documentary
Stand on a pedestrian overbridge at 6pm and narrate the traffic below to yourself like David Attenborough. Minimum 15 minutes.
- Easy
See Tipu Sultan's summer palace
A two-storey teak palace from 1791, tucked into the old fort area near KR Market.
- Easy
Buy one fruit you've never eaten at Russell Market
A 1920s covered market in Shivajinagar with stalls for fruit, meat, flowers and dry goods.
- Easy
Ride the Yellow Line from one end to the other
Sixteen elevated stations from RV Road to Bommasandra give you a long look at south Bangalore from above.
- Easy
Swalpa adjust maadi
Learn it, then deploy it successfully in a real situation (bus seat, parking dispute, queue). Instant citizenship.
- Easy
Write your name in Kannada
Get someone at a stationery shop or a schoolkid to teach you. Practice until a native speaker can read it.
- Easy
Order the butter masala dosa at CTR
Central Tiffin Room in Malleshwaram has made benne dosa since the 1920s and still has a queue for it.
- Easy
Eat your way down Mosque Road from Albert Bakery
Frazer Town's old bakery opens in the afternoon, and the rest of the street fills up after dark.
- Easy
Passport photos for no reason
Get 8 passport photos taken at a tiny old studio. Give one to a friend. Hide one in a library book.
- Easy
Find what's left of old Whitefield
Before the tech parks, Whitefield was an 1882 settlement for Anglo-Indian families, and a few old bungalows still stand.
- Easy
Watch the sunrise from Lalbagh rock
A sheet of billions-of-years-old gneiss inside Lalbagh, with a Kempegowda watchtower on top and a wide view east.
- Easy
The ₹20 oracle
Ask your auto driver for his single best piece of life advice. Tip ₹20 for it. Write it down. Collect ten over a month.
- Easy
See the Bull Temple and the cave temple nearby
Two old temples a short walk apart: a giant monolithic Nandi and a Shiva shrine cut into rock.
- Easy
Rent a book for ₹10
Find a surviving old lending library (the kind with brown-paper-covered novels), pay the deposit, actually return it on time.
- Easy
Eat a masala dosa at Vidyarthi Bhavan
A Gandhi Bazaar tiffin room that has served the same crisp dosa since the 1940s.
- Easy
Take a random BMTC bus to its last stop
You'll end up in a neighbourhood you've never heard of, which is the point.
- Easy
Peanut cone speedrun
Buy roasted peanuts in a newspaper cone from a pushcart. Finish them before the cone unravels. Read whatever fragment of news you're left holding.
- Easy
Learn the auto flick
Master the exact lazy wrist-flick locals use to stop an auto. Practice until one actually stops. No raised arm allowed.
- Easy
The blinking weighing machine
Find one of those old flashing-light weighing machines outside a railway station or temple, pay the coin, keep the ticket in your wallet like a talisman.
- Easy
One by two with a stranger
At any standing tiffin counter, offer to split a filter coffee "one by two" with whoever's next to you. The quest fails if you don't learn their name.
- Easy
The 7pm bell
Follow the sound of a bell to the nearest tiny neighbourhood temple aarti. Stand at the back. Accept whatever prasada comes your way.
- Medium
Busker census
On a Saturday evening, tip every street performer you find ₹10 and ask each one how they ended up here. Minimum five stories.
- Medium
Random station roulette
Take the metro to a station you've never exited, pick a direction with a coin toss, walk 1 km, and eat breakfast at the first place with a queue.
- Medium
Walk under old fighter jets at the HAL museum
HAL's museum on Old Airport Road keeps real aircraft parked in the open, and you can walk right up to them.
- Medium
Climb Makalidurga and look down on the lake
A boulder trail near Doddaballapura that ends at a ruined fort and a Shiva temple above a lake.
- Medium
The parrot decides
Find a parrot astrologer, pay for a reading, and genuinely act on one harmless thing the parrot's card tells you that week.
- Medium
Walk the walls of Devanahalli Fort
A fort near the airport first built around 1501, with Tipu Sultan's birthplace inside the old town.
- Medium
Buy a wooden toy in Channapatna
The town that makes lacquered wooden toys is an hour away, and you can watch them turned on a lathe.
- Medium
Walk Chickpet and Avenue Road on a weekday
The oldest market streets in the city sell everything from silk saris to secondhand textbooks.
- Medium
Flowers at 4am, strangers all day
Buy a huge cheap bundle of flowers wholesale before dawn, then give small bunches to strangers across the city until they're gone.
- Medium
The laughing club initiation
Join a 6am park laughing club for one session. Commit fully. Fake laughter becoming real laughter is the whole quest.
- Medium
Free concert in a sabha
Walk into a Sunday morning Carnatic concert at a Malleswaram-style sabha. Free, air no AC can replicate, and the uncles will explain the raga if you ask.
- Medium
Lose to the park uncles
Join the carrom or chess circle in any park. Lose. Ask for a lesson. Come back next week.
- Medium
Eat donne biryani at Shivaji Military Hotel
A Jayanagar military hotel that has served biryani in leaf bowls for close to a century.
- Medium
Eat five things on VV Puram food street
A short vegetarian street near Sajjan Rao Circle where every stall does one thing.
- Medium
Gully cricket, wrong hand
Get yourself invited into a kids' street match. Bat with your non-dominant hand. Get bowled by a nine-year-old. Buy the winning team ₹50 of snacks.
- Medium
Champi protocol
Get a haircut at a proper old-school saloon (film posters, ceiling fan, no app booking) and say yes to the head massage. Surrender completely.
- Medium
Where the auto drivers eat
Ask an auto stand where they have lunch. Go there. It will be better and cheaper than anything on your delivery app.
- Medium
First day, first show, no subtitles
Watch a Kannada film on release day at a single-screen theatre. Whistle when the crowd whistles. Piece the plot together afterward.
- Medium
Glucose biscuit precision dip
At a roadside tea stall, dip a glucose biscuit in chai and extract it intact ten times in a row. Harder than any trek on that website.
- Medium
₹500 blinking machine
Enter the SP Road electronics maze and leave with parts to build something that lights up or makes noise. Actually build it.
- Medium
Catch the sunrise at Nandi Hills
On a good winter morning you stand above the clouds 60 km from your flat.
- Medium
Walk the KR Market flower market at dawn
Before sunrise the flower floor at KR Market moves more jasmine and marigold than you've seen in your life.
- Medium
Midnight hospital dosa
Find one of the all-night canteens that run outside big hospitals and eat there at 1am among night-shift nurses and anxious families. Quietly. It recalibrates you.
- Medium
Visit Nrityagram, the dance village
A residential Odissi dance school outside Hesaraghatta, built in mud and stone by an architect for its dancers.
- Medium
Go birding at Hesaraghatta at sunrise
The city's last big grassland has close to 300 recorded bird species and almost no crowds.
- Medium
Look for vultures at Ramadevarabetta
India's first vulture sanctuary sits in the rocky hills of Ramanagara, where Sholay was shot.
- Medium
Have breakfast at four darshinis in one morning
Standing-only tiffin counters are the city's real breakfast, and each does one thing best.
- Medium
Tailor, not mall
Get one shirt or kurta stitched by a local tailor from fabric you chose yourself. Attend the fitting like it's a ceremony.
- Hard
Two rooftops, one sun
Watch sunrise from a rooftop on one edge of the city and sunset from the opposite edge, moving only by public transport in between.
- Hard
Khara bun championship
Visit every Iyengar bakery on one long road in one day, rank the khara buns and honey cake, and publish your findings to your group chat like a federal report.
- Hard
The ₹200 day
Survive a full day in the city (food, transport, entertainment) on ₹200 flat. Street food and BMTC are your allies.
- Hard
No Maps Day
Sunrise to sunset across at least three neighbourhoods, navigating only by asking humans. Phone stays in your pocket.
- Hard
Elder archive
Find five people over seventy (park benches, old shops, your own building) and record them describing the Bangalore of their twenties. You will not believe the lakes they swam in.
- Hard
Do the Skandagiri sunrise trek
A night climb to a ruined hill fort near Chikkaballapur, timed to see the sun come up over the clouds.
- Hard
Take a day trip to Lepakshi
A 16th-century temple across the Andhra border, with a hanging pillar and a giant stone Nandi.
- Hard
Take the train to Bangarapet for pani puri
A town in Kolar district famous for its chaat, reachable by a cheap train ride east.
- Hard
Climb Savandurga, the big monolith
One of the largest single rocks in Asia sits an hour west of the city, and you can walk up it.
- Hard
Blindfold street-food trials
A friend buys five street foods of their choosing. You taste blindfolded and must name each one. Loser funds the next quest.
- Hard
Passenger train lottery
Board a slow passenger train out of the city, get off at a village station you've never heard of, eat whatever exists near the platform, return by evening.
- Hard
Walk from Hebbal Lake to Lalbagh
About 13 km from north to south on foot, and you'll know how the neighbourhoods connect.
- Hard
The auto-driver tour
Hire one auto driver for half a day at an honest rate and let him choose every stop. His Bangalore, not yours. No vetoes.
- Hard
See Shivanasamudra falls and Talakadu's sand temples
The Kaveri drops off a cliff at one stop and buries a town's temples in sand at the next.
- Hard
Transport bingo
In one day: metro, ordinary BMTC bus, Volvo, share auto, regular auto, local train, cycle, and your own feet for at least 3 km. No cabs.
- Hard
Silent Saturday
A full day out in the city without speaking. Gestures, notes, and pointing only. Discover how far "nodding at the right moment" actually gets you.
- Hard
Climb Kunti Betta before dawn
Twin rocky hills near Pandavapura with a sunrise view over Thonnur lake and paddy fields.
- Hard
Twenty sentences, strangers only
Learn 20 usable Kannada sentences in one week, taught exclusively by strangers (vendors, conductors, security guards). Each teacher signs a page of your notebook.
- Hard
Dabba day
Do all your shopping for a day the pre-plastic way: cloth bag, steel dabbas, paper packets. Find the old shops that still weigh things on balance scales.
- Hard
Touch every metro terminal in one day
Six terminals across three lines, and you get to know the network better than most commuters do.
- Legendary
The Four Towers
Kempegowda built watchtowers marking the city's original limits. Find all four in one day (Lalbagh, Halasuru, Mekhri side, and Kempambudhi) and trace the 1537 city on foot.
- Legendary
The 24-hour awake lap
4am wholesale flower market, sunrise chai, full day of quests off this list, midnight biryani, 3am tea with cab drivers, watch the city wake up again. No naps.
- Legendary
Kannada week
Seven consecutive days where every transaction you can control happens in Kannada, however broken. Strangers will carry you.
- Legendary
Climb Kumara Parvatha
One of the toughest treks in Karnataka: 13 km each way from Kukke Subramanya to the summit.
- Legendary
Ten living lakes
Touch the water's edge (reverently, not literally swimming) of ten different surviving lakes in one day. Bangalore once had hundreds.
- Legendary
Reach all four edges of the city by bus and metro
Yelahanka, Whitefield, Kengeri and Electronic City in one day, no cabs, no autos.
- Legendary
Cycle from the city to the top of Nandi Hills
About 60 km out of the city, then a long climb up the hairpins to the top.
- Legendary
Follow the dead river
The Vrishabhavati river starts near Basavanagudi and flows, mostly forgotten, right through the city. Trace it as far as you can bear.
- Legendary
Take the overnight train to Hampi
Board a sleeper on Friday night and wake up near the ruins of the Vijayanagara capital.
- Legendary
₹1000 in ₹10s
Withdraw a thousand rupees in tens and give it away across a hundred tiny interactions in one day (tips, buskers, kids' cricket prize money). Track what it does to your mood.
- Legendary
Author your own
Invent a brand-new sidequest nobody's done, convince ten strangers or friends to complete it, and collect proof from each.
- Legendary
One hundred teachers
Over a month, get 100 strangers to each teach you one thing (a knot, a word, a recipe, a shortcut, a prayer, a card trick). Keep a logbook.