Places

PattadakalHeritageUNESCOBagalkot

Ten major temples in one enclosure on the Malaprabha, built in the seventh and eighth centuries in two different architectural grammars side by side — the northern Nagara curvilinear tower at Kadasiddheshwara, Jambulinga, Galaganatha and Papanatha, and the southern Dravida stepped tower at Sangameshwara, Virupaksha and Mallikarjuna. The Virupaksha was built by Queen Lokamahadevi to mark Vikramaditya II's campaign against Kanchi, and its inscriptions name the architects. Inscribed on the World Heritage list in 1987.

Best time: November–February.

BadamiHeritageBagalkot

Four rock-cut caves in a red sandstone cliff above the Agastya tank — three Brahmanical and one Jain — of which Cave 3 carries a dated inscription of 578. Across the water stand the Bhutanatha temple groups and above them the fort. The whole site works because the sandstone is horizontally bedded and cuts cleanly.

Best time: November–February, early morning.

AiholeHeritageBagalkot

Over a hundred temples of the fifth to eighth centuries scattered through and around a village — the apsidal Durga temple with its colonnaded ambulatory, the flat-roofed Lad Khan, the Huchimalli and the Jain Meguti on the hill. It is usually described as an architectural laboratory, and for once the phrase is accurate.

Meguti hill inscriptionHeritageBagalkot

A Sanskrit prashasti composed by the court poet Ravikirti on the Meguti temple at Aihole, dated to 634, recording Pulakeshin II's defeat of Harsha and naming Kalidasa and Bharavi as the standard against which the poet measures himself. It is one of the firmest dating anchors in Indian literary history.

Mahakuta and BanashankariPilgrimageBagalkot

Mahakuta is a cluster of early Chalukya shrines around a spring-fed tank a few kilometres from Badami; Banashankari, closer to the town, has a large stepped tank and draws the Malaprabha valley's biggest fair.

KudalasangamaPilgrimageBagalkot

Where the Malaprabha meets the Krishna, and the site of Basavanna's samadhi. The older Sangameshwara temple stands partly below the reservoir level and is reached by a lift built into a shaft; the modern complex above is a centre of the Sharana tradition.

Basavana BagewadiPilgrimageVijayapura

Basavanna's birthplace, a small town with a Chalukya-period Nandeeshwara temple and a memorial complex. Between here and Kudalasangama, this plain holds both ends of his life while the events of it happened on the plateau to the east.

Gol GumbazHeritageVijayapura

The tomb of Mohammed Adil Shah, completed in 1656, whose dome is about 44 metres across inside — among the largest masonry domes ever built, and carried on eight intersecting arches that transfer its load without external buttressing. The whispering gallery at the drum returns a sound many times over, which makes it almost unusable when crowded and extraordinary when empty.

Best time: November–February, at opening time.

Ibrahim RauzaHeritageVijayapura

The tomb and mosque of Ibrahim Adil Shah II on a single raised plinth, built in the early seventeenth century and far finer in its stone carving and inscriptional work than the larger Gol Gumbaz. Its proportions are frequently called the best in Deccani architecture.

Bara Kaman, Malik-e-Maidan and Upli BurujHeritageVijayapura

An unfinished mausoleum of twelve arches abandoned at the springing line, a very large sixteenth-century bronze cannon on a bastion, and a watchtower climbed by an external stair. Together they are the rest of the Adil Shahi city, and all three are free to walk into.

Almatti DamNatureVijayapura

The Krishna reservoir whose canals turned the driest districts in Karnataka into cane, grape and raisin country within a generation. The garden below the dam is a local evening destination in its own right.

Gokak FallsNatureBelagavi

The Ghataprabha drops about 50 metres over a sandstone lip, with a hanging bridge across the gorge. A hydroelectric installation was built here in 1887 to power the Gokak cotton mill — among the earliest in India — and the mill and the falls have shaped the town ever since.

Best time: August–October, when the river is high.

Saundatti YellammaPilgrimageBelagavi

A hilltop Renuka-Yellamma temple drawing very large crowds, particularly at the Margashirsha full moon. The dedication of girls to the goddess, historically associated with this shrine, was prohibited by the Karnataka Devadasis (Prohibition of Dedication) Act of 1982.

KitturHeritageBelagavi

The fort and palace ruins of the small state whose ruler Chennamma defeated a British force in October 1824 before being taken the following year. A government museum on the site holds arms and inscriptions, and the town's annual utsava marks the battle.

Belagavi Fort and Kamal BastiHeritageBelagavi

A moated fort of the late fourteenth century holding a Jain basti with a lotus carved on its ceiling, and two mosques. Belagavi's other landmark is the 1924 Congress session ground, the only session Gandhi presided over.

HalasiHeritageBelagavi

An early Kadamba capital in the forested western taluks, with a Bhuvaraha Narasimha temple and a set of smaller shrines. Green, wet and entirely unlike the plain twenty kilometres east.

LakkundiHeritageGadag

A village with an extraordinary concentration of later Chalukya temples and stepwells — the Kashivishveshwara with its double shrine and lathe-turned pillars, the Brahma Jinalaya, and a series of finely built wells. The masons here worked in a fine-grained schist rather than sandstone, which is why the carving is sharper than at Badami.

Gadag and DambalHeritageGadag

The Trikuteshwara complex at Gadag with its Saraswati shrine and the Veeranarayana temple where Kumaravyasa is held to have composed his Mahabharata; Doddabasappa at Dambal nearby has a stellate plan of remarkable geometric complexity.

Magadi and AttiveriWildlifeGadag and Haveri

Two shallow tank wetlands that fill after the monsoon and take large numbers of wintering waterfowl — Magadi is known for bar-headed geese, Attiveri for a wide mix of migratory duck and wader.

Best time: December–February.

Bankapura and KagineleHeritageHaveri

Bankapura's fort holds a peacock sanctuary and a Chalukya-period mosque and temple; Kaginele is the town associated with Kanakadasa and holds his memorial. Haveri district also contains Byadgi, whose chilli market sets the price for the crop nationally.