Royal palaces, misty coffee hills
& the ruins of two empires
Karnataka packs an extraordinary range into a single state — Mysore's illuminated royal palace still glows every Sunday evening exactly as it did under the Wadiyar dynasty, while Coorg's mist-wrapped coffee plantations climb the Western Ghats toward Kerala's border.
Bandipur and Nagarhole's tiger-and-elephant forests form part of one of South India's most important wildlife corridors, while Ooty's tea-covered Nilgiri hills lie just across the Tamil Nadu border, reachable by the UNESCO-listed Nilgiri Mountain Railway.
Further north, the UNESCO World Heritage ruins of Hampi — once the Vijayanagara Empire's capital and among the largest cities on earth in the 14th century — and Badami's 6th-century Chalukyan cave temples reveal a completely different, older Karnataka carved directly into boulder-strewn granite landscapes.
