Malnad · Deccan Inland Plateau
The Sharavathi drops in four separate falls — Raja, Roarer, Rocket and Rani — over a sandstone-and-basalt lip into a gorge. The flow is regulated by the Linganamakki reservoir upstream, so the falls are at full volume only in the monsoon or when water is released, and can be a trickle in April.
Best time: July–October.
A village on the crest with a mean annual rainfall of about 7,620 mm and a west-facing viewpoint that catches the sunset over the coastal plain in the clear months. The Agumbe Rainforest Research Station, founded in 2005 by the herpetologist Romulus Whitaker, works here on king cobra ecology, including radio telemetry of relocated snakes.
Best time: October–February for the view; June–September for the rain. Getting there: The Agumbe ghat road climbs from Udupi in fourteen hairpin bends; from Shivamogga it is a straightforward drive.
Shola forest and rolling grassland around a 1,894 m peak whose profile gives it its name — horse's face. Iron ore was mined inside the range until operations were wound up in the mid-2000s. The Tunga and Bhadra both rise here, at Gangamoola.
Best time: October–February.
Karnataka's highest ground at 1,930 m, with a ridge walk along grassland tops. The adjoining Baba Budangiri range takes its name from the seventeenth-century figure traditionally credited with bringing coffee seed to these hills, and holds a shrine long visited by people of more than one faith.
Best time: October–February.
A math on the Tunga, held by tradition to be the first of the four established by Adi Shankara. The Vidyashankara temple of about 1338 has twelve pillars carved with the zodiac signs, arranged so that the sun's light falls on each in its month, and the temple fish in the river below are fed rather than caught.
Best time: October–February.
The Annapoorneshwari temple in a deep forested valley, which serves free meals to every visitor as its central act of worship — Annapoorneshwari is the goddess of food, and the kitchen is not an adjunct here.
The Chennakeshava temple, begun in 1117 under Vishnuvardhana, on a star-shaped plan with bracket figures of extraordinary depth and a set of perforated stone screens. Carved in chloritic schist, which is soft when quarried and hardens on exposure — the reason the detail is finer than sandstone or granite allows. Inscribed in 2023 as part of the Sacred Ensembles of the Hoysalas.
Best time: October–February.
The Hoysaleswara temple, begun about 1121 and never finished — the towers were not completed and the work stops mid-figure in places, which is precisely what makes the carving process legible. The friezes run in continuous bands of elephants, horsemen and narrative around the entire base. Inscribed in 2023 with Belur and Somanathapura.
The Lakshmi Devi temple of 1114, the earliest dated Hoysala temple, with four shrines around a common hall and a plainness that shows what the style looked like before it became ornate.
The 17-metre monolithic figure of Bahubali on Vindhyagiri hill, carved about 981 and reached by more than six hundred rock-cut steps. The Mahamastakabhisheka, in which the statue is anointed from a scaffold, is held roughly every twelve years; the last was in 2018. The town sits on the dry eastern lip of the region, not in the wet hills.
A star-shaped fort of 1792 built under Tipu Sultan on a hill above Sakleshpur, laid out on a plan of European military derivation and visible as a complete eight-pointed star from the air.
Coffee and cardamom country on the ghat lip, with the Bisle viewpoint looking across three ranges. The railway line down to Subrahmanya runs through a long series of tunnels and viaducts and is one of the more spectacular descents in India.
Deciduous and semi-evergreen forest around the Bhadra reservoir, holding tiger, gaur, elephant and a very high density of leopard. The reserve is notable for a village resettlement in the early 2000s that is generally cited as one of the few conducted with the consent of those moved.
Best time: November–March.
The Cauvery's source is a small tank on the Brahmagiri slope, in which the spring is said to well up at a fixed moment each October at Tula Sankramana. Bhagamandala below is the confluence of the Cauvery, Kannike and the notionally subterranean Sujyoti.
Best time: October–February.
Kodagu's hill town — the fort with its later church-museum, the Omkareshwara temple of 1820 built in a frankly Islamic idiom by a Hindu ruler, the domed royal tombs at Gaddige, and Raja's Seat looking west over the valleys.
Moist deciduous forest on Kodagu's eastern edge, continuous with Bandipur and Wayanad and part of one of the largest contiguous elephant and tiger landscapes in Asia. The waterside game viewing along the Kabini backwater is among the most reliable in India.
Best time: October–May.
A waterfall on the Lakshmana Tirtha below the Brahmagiri range, with a trek up into shola-grassland above it that requires a forest department permit.
Best time: October–February.
The two successive capitals of the Keladi Nayakas, who ruled Malnad from the sixteenth century until 1763. The Aghoreshwara temple at Ikkeri is a heavy stone building mixing Hoysala, Vijayanagara and Deccani elements; the museum at Keladi holds the dynasty's palm-leaf records.
Kuvempu's family house at Kuppalli, now the Kavimane museum, with his samadhi on the rock outcrop of Kavishaila above it. Melige, where U. R. Ananthamurthy was born, is in the same taluk about twenty kilometres away.
A village near Sagara that runs a theatre institute, a repertory company, a film society and a publishing house. Its annual culture course each October brings several hundred participants to a settlement of a few thousand people.
The Sharavathi reservoir, with drowned valleys, ferry crossings and a long-running open-water camp and kayaking operation at Honnemaradu. The reservoir controls what Jog Falls does.
Places worth visiting in Malnad — heritage sites, wildlife, pilgrimage and landscape, with the best time to go. (21)