Karnataka
Discover Karnataka
Introduction
Karnataka sits on the Deccan plateau in south-west India, with the Western Ghats along its seaward edge and a long Arabian Sea coast beyond them. Bangalore, the capital, is India’s technology centre and sits at around nine hundred metres, which gives it a climate far milder than most of the subcontinent and is the reason the British made it a garrison town in the first place.
The state has an unusual concentration of heritage. Hampi was the capital of the Vijayanagara empire, and its temples, bazaars and stone chariot stand among a landscape of enormous granite boulders that looks like nowhere else in India; it is UNESCO-listed, as are the Chalukya rock-cut and structural temples at Pattadakal, and the Hoysala temples at Belur, Halebidu and Somanathapura, whose soapstone carving is as fine as stone carving gets. Mysore adds a palace lit by ninety-seven thousand bulbs and the ten-day Dasara festival.
The Ghats are the wet, green half of the state: coffee estates around Coorg and Chikmagalur, which grow most of India’s coffee, and the tiger and elephant reserves at Bandipur and Nagarhole. The coast at Gokarna and Karwar is quieter than Goa just north of it. Kannada is the language, Udupi restaurants exported south Indian vegetarian cooking across the country, and the monsoon runs June to September.