Karnataka & the Deccan

Karnataka gives you the Deccan without the traffic Rajasthan carries. Hampi is the centrepiece: twenty-six square kilometres of Vijayanagara ruins scattered through granite boulders, best walked at first light and again at five. Badami, Aihole and Pattadakal, three hours north, hold the sandstone cave temples where south Indian architecture was worked out. The Hoysala temples at Belur and Halebidu are a different discipline altogether — soapstone cut like ivory. South of Mysuru, Kabini’s backwaters produce leopards with real regularity and, occasionally, the black one. In Kodagu the coffee flowers for about a week in March and the whole hillside smells of jasmine. Roads are decent, which is not true everywhere.