Karnataka

Karnataka's substance is stone. Hampi, inscribed by UNESCO in 1986, is the ruined capital of the Vijayanagara empire spread over a boulder field so strange the landscape competes with the architecture. Pattadakal, inscribed in 1987, is where Chalukya builders worked out how northern and southern temple forms fit together. The Hoysala temples at Belur, Halebid and Somnathpur were added to the list in 2023 and are carved at a density you have to stand close to read. A sensible trip runs Bengaluru, Mysuru, Hassan for the Hoysalas, then north to Hampi and Badami. The mistake is bolting the coast onto that. Gokarna and the Kodagu coffee hills lie the other way entirely, and adding them turns a good ten days into three long drives. Badami and Aihole sit close to Pattadakal and take a fraction of the visitors; the cave temples cut into the sandstone at Badami are the better half of that trio for most people. Bandipur and Nagarhole stay open all year, and sightings are best in the dry months before the rains, when the animals come to water. October to February. Hampi runs to forty degrees in May and there is no shade in it.