Amazing weather today! Walked from Basavanagudi to BTM layout (≈ 7kms). Here are my few comments on pedestrian walking system of the city.

As the title says, I decided to go to Basavanagudi today to feel the vibes in this beautiful weather. I decided to start walking from Basavanagudi, and it went on and on until I stopped at BTM Layout. I covered some of the core areas of Bangalore like Basavanagudi, Jayanagar (2nd to 5th block), JP Nagar, the ORR part of JP Nagar, and finally BTM Layout. The overall walk took around 2 hours, with stops in between. I started at 6 and reached BTM by 8 approximately. The good weather and the breeze from the green cover gave me enough enthusiasm to walk. Here is my honest opinion about the city's walking system: First and foremost, the areas between Basavanagudi and Jayanagar are perfect for walking. They have an amazing green cover and wide enough footpaths that are not encroached, except for a few patches here and there, which is fine. Once I entered Jayanagar, I walked across many quiet residential streets. The streets are wide enough and clean, with a few shops here and there, including some famous eateries. The area around Jayanagar Raghavendra Swamy Temple (Jayanagar 5th Block) is amazing. Things start getting a little messy once we cross Marenahalli Road and enter JP Nagar. Marenahalli road is good until Jayanagar, but after that, there is a long patch of dirt and broken footpaths. While JP Nagar is a decent area with good houses and wide roads, the footpaths are messed up—very wonky in some places! Roads don’t have proper streetlights, and the tree cover makes them even darker. On some streets, it was so dark that only the vehicle headlights were visible. I had to turn on a flashlight just to see what was in front of me and to notify others that I was there. Some main roads have lights because of the commercial buildings, but the internal streets get really scary. The same goes for some parts of BTM Layout as well. I can’t generalize the whole area, but that’s the case for at least a few roads I walked across. ORR in JP Nagar side is very narrow - people call it ORR but it's width is almost same as any other main road in Jayanagar. ORR by design should be the backbone of the city - anyone should be able to enter ORR and travel to any point on the circular path without having to worry about turns and accidents, but narrow road makes the experience bad. Footpaths are filled with uncollected trash in some places and smells of urine, which makes the walking experience terrible. But overall it was a great experience, the experience is skewed highly towards Jayanagar and Basavanagudi, while I appreciated the wide roads of JP Nagar, footphaths and street lights are messy in some places.