Forgotten Lanes of India

FOOT IN FORGOTTEN LANES – ON INDIA

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
– John Muir

I got to travel across the country from early childhood with my travel-loving family; hence, I was bitten by the travel bug at quite a young age. My engineering education led me to work in Singapore as a Software Engineer and also gave me an opportunity to travel across Southeast Asia.

I was extremely impressed by how well the travel & tourism space had evolved in this region. What surprised me even more was that Singapore, as a city-country which has a mere 50 years of history compared to India’s 5,000 years, receives more tourist footfalls than the entire country of India. To put this into further perspective, the country of Singapore is smaller than Bengaluru city in size.

Whilst in Singapore, I had the opportunity to go on a walking tour and I absolutely enjoyed the experience! It appealed to me on three levels – Travel, Trivia, and People. That was the moment when I decided to come back to India, quit my job, and start an experiential tour company.

Named Gully Tours (formerly known as Royal Mysore Walks), the tour aimed to explore India through the many hidden or little-explored alleys of its sprawling, buzzing cities.

My journey started in Mysuru, where we initially offered just walking tours. This, though, very quickly expanded to cycle tours, open jeep tours, and a series of bespoke tours, where we now have over 25 curated tours in Mysuru itself.

We love curating unique travel experiences. From an extremely interactive culinary tour where you shop for ingredients, learn to cook like a local, and share a meal at a local’s home, to a Yoga tour where you not only discover and understand why Mysuru has become the world capital of Ashtanga Yoga but also get to practise Yoga at a local shala (centre) and enjoy a healthy treat at a Yoga Café afterwards, our aim is always to provide authentic, meaningful, and immersive local experiences.

At Gully Tours, there has always been a strong focus on responsible tourism. The idea is not only to ensure that travellers and locals experience the best that India’s cities have to offer but also to do our part in preserving the country’s ancient, rich, diverse, and vast culture and heritage.

We therefore work with local craftsperson communities to help preserve fast-vanishing art and craft by showcasing their skills and helping them market or sell their expertise and products to travellers. We also organise free tours for the underprivileged and are actively involved in many such initiatives which have always been important to us.

Having done fairly well in Mysuru, I asked myself, what next? I had enjoyed building the business in Mysuru but was unsure of the next step, just yet. This led me to pursue an MBA from the University of Oxford, with a special focus on entrepreneurship.

After finishing business school, I decided to work with a couple of travel ventures in London to understand that space better, gain clearer insights into the future of our company, and explore the possibilities ahead. All the while, I had a strong team that kept the business running back in Mysuru.

At Gully Tours, we love exploring the unexplored and unfolding stories that haven’t been told. You are definitely not bound to hear the same stories you may have read in guidebooks or heard multiple times about India.

We research, speak to plenty of patrons, dig really deep into the culture of every area that we explore, and find myriad fascinating stories and threads of history. Having done all this, our success comes only if the story is just as passionately retold and recreated by my team for our guests.

So, on my return to India, I set up an academy to train young adults in the art of storytelling so that these passionate youngsters can lead invigorating tours.

With a focus on broadening our base, we have now expanded to newer destinations such as Coorg, where we offer a coffee trail; in Bengaluru, a city known both as the ‘start-up’ capital and pub capital of India, we offer a start-up tour and a pub crawl.

In Kochi, we offer a spice trail, tracing the 3,000-year-old spice trade, as well as a toddy trail where you meet multigenerational toddy tappers and learn the art of tapping toddy from them.

In 2009, when I started my entrepreneurial journey in a country that hadn’t yet accepted experiential tours, it was just I – a one-man show offering a walking tour in Mysuru.

Today, we are a team of more than 20 passionate storytellers, offering more than 50 different tours in four destinations – Bengaluru, Mysuru, Coorg, and Kochi.

It has been an exciting journey so far, but I believe we have only scratched the tip of the iceberg when it comes to experiential travel in India.

Vinay Parameswarappa

Vinay Parameswarappa is the founder of gully.tours (formerly Royal Mysore Walks), who enjoys creating immersive experiential tours that help travellers and locals alike to explore a destination.

Vinay has worked in the field of travel & technology in India, Singapore, and the UK. His work has been featured on Netflix, The Guardian, National Geographic Magazine, and Condé Nast Traveler.