The countryside around Tumkur is more interesting than the town itself. Devarayanadurga, a forested hill range about 15 km south of town, has a Vishnu temple (Bhoganarasimhaswamy) and a Lakshmi-Narasimha temple perched on granite outcrops with views across the Deccan plateau. The hill has good birdwatching and a modest trekking trail to the fort ruins at the top.
Madhugiri, roughly 100 km northwest of Tumkur, has one of the most dramatic hill forts in Karnataka — a single massive granite monolith rising over 1,000 metres above the surrounding plain. The climb to the fort on top takes 2–3 hours and involves some scrambling on bare rock. Claimed by locals to be Asia's second-largest monolith, it is genuinely impressive and gets far fewer visitors than comparable sites.
Sira, 65 km north, is an old fort town with Mughal and Mysore sultanate-era fortifications and a busy textile market.