I drove up from San Francisco on a Saturday morning to meet two of my friends in Old Sacramento for a tuk-tuk mural tour, and it turned out to be one of the most fun mornings I’ve had in a while. We crossed the famous Tower Bridge, stumbled on a shipping container art gallery I’d never heard of, and spotted a mural from one of my favorite films, all from the back of a baby pink tuk-tuk.
Not a bad way to spend a Saturday.
Capital Tuk-Tuk is the brainchild of Manushi Weerasinghe, a Sacramento therapist turned entrepreneur who grew up riding tuk-tuks in Sri Lanka. When she moved to Sacramento for graduate school, she fell in love with the city and eventually decided to bring a piece of her childhood here.
The result is a small, woman-owned touring company that has been showing locals and visitors around Sacramento since 2022. She runs every tour herself, and that personal touch makes all the difference.
Capital TukTuk Tour
What It Actually Feels Like to Ride a Tuk-Tuk
Picture a baby pink three-wheeled vehicle, open on the sides, with a shaded canopy overhead. You climb in, settle onto the bench seat, and suddenly the city looks completely different. You’re low to the ground, close to the street, and moving at a pace that actually lets you take things in.
The breeze hits you as you zip through intersections (don’t worry, seatbelts are installed!)
It seats up to six, but four is the sweet spot for comfort. The canopy provides shade, though the Sacramento sun is no joke, so bring sunscreen anyway. You’re welcome to bring non-alcoholic drinks on board, which is how I ended up starting the tour with a pistachio rose latte from Blueprint Coffee Shop, where the tour kicks off in Old Town.
Capital TukTuk
Manushi Makes the Experience
We met Manushi outside Blueprint before hopping on, and within the first few minutes, she made something clear: this is your time. Want to linger at a mural for twenty minutes? Great.
Want to move fast and cram in more stops? Also great. She shapes the tour around you, and that flexibility makes it feel less like a scheduled activity and more like exploring the city with a friend who happens to know every interesting corner of it.
She also knows Sacramento deeply. As we rolled through the streets, she pointed out history, context, and stories behind the murals that you’d never get from just walking past them. It added a layer to the whole experience that I didn’t expect.
What We Saw on the Mural Tour
We did the Murals of Sacramento Tour. Almost immediately after climbing on, we crossed the Tower Bridge, Sacramento’s golden drawbridge over the river. It’s one of those landmarks you’ve probably seen in photos a hundred times, but rolling across it in an open-air tuk-tuk with the water below and the Capitol in the distance is its own thing entirely.
Capital TukTuk
The stop that stuck with me most was Twisted Track Gallery on R Street, a stretch of shipping containers completely covered in murals. It has the kind of creative, gritty energy you find in certain neighborhoods in Austin or Portland, and I’ve walked R Street plenty of times without ever making it to this corner.
We hopped off, wandered around, took photos, and grabbed coffee from the shop right next door before climbing back on.
We also passed the Lady Bird mural, painted in honor of the 2017 Greta Gerwig film shot entirely in Sacramento. Seeing it from the tuk-tuk while riding through the actual streets featured in the movie is a genuinely cool moment. And if Lady Bird is your thing, Manushi offers a dedicated Lady Bird Tour that hits all the filming locations, including Tower Bridge, Tower Cafe, and McKinley Park.
The tour wrapped at the California State Capitol, a perfect excuse for a few photos before Manushi looped us back to where we started.
Capital TukTuk
Other Tours Worth Knowing About
The mural tours are just the starting point. Capital Tuk-Tuk also runs a Sweets and Brews Dessert Tour hitting Sacramento’s best coffee shops and dessert spots, a Beer and Wine Crawl that takes you to three spots of your choosing, and a Fab Forties Holiday Lights Tour through Sacramento’s most decorated neighborhood in December.
They also do weddings, bachelorette parties, and corporate events, and for those situations the no-parking, no-logistics setup is genuinely a gift.
Is It Worth Booking?
Without question. Sacramento is a city that rewards slowing down, and a tuk-tuk forces you to do exactly that. Even my friends who have lived there for years left saying they saw parts of their neighborhood they’d walked past a hundred times without noticing. That’s what a good tour does.
Manushi built this company from scratch, survived a pandemic shutdown, and came back stronger because Sacramento kept showing up for her.
Tours range in price but start at around $175 for a private reservation. Browse all available tours and book at Capital TukTuk or connect with them on Instagram.