Places to visit in Karnataka
182 places to visit in Karnataka, each with LOQAH's carefully crafted stamp of its own: Gomateshwara, Agumbe, Brahmagiri Wildlife Sanctuary and more. Stand at any of them with the app open and the stamp is yours, confirmed on site, in your Karnataka volume.
1 Wonder of the world · 10 UNESCO World Heritage sites · 22 National monuments · 2 State heritage sites · 79 Famous places to visit · 6 Offbeat places · 62 Hidden gems
Wonders of the world in Karnataka (1)
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Gomateshwara
A seventeen metre Jain figure cut from one rock in 981, reached by six hundred steps up bare granite, barefoot.
UNESCO World Heritage sites in Karnataka (10)
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Agumbe
The wettest place in south India, king cobra country, and where the rainforest research station sits.
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Brahmagiri Wildlife Sanctuary
The hills above Talacauvery where the Kaveri rises, with shola and grassland.
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Chennakesava Temple
Hoysala work of 1117, soapstone cut so fine the bracket figures wear jewellery with separate strands.
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Hampi
The ruins of a city that was once among the largest on earth, scattered across a valley of boulders.
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Hoysaleswara Temple
Carved for eighty years and never finished, its plinth wrapped in continuous friezes of elephants, horses and stories.
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Keshava Temple
The most complete Hoysala temple of the three, finished in 1268 and never damaged, standing on a star shaped plinth.
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Kudremukh National Park
Shola grassland and rainforest named for a peak shaped like a horse's face, one of the wettest places in the Western Ghats.
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Pattadakal
Where northern and southern temple styles were tried side by side in the eighth century, and the argument settled.
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Someshwara Wildlife Sanctuary
Evergreen forest in the Agumbe ghats, with lion-tailed macaques.
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Virupaksha Temple
Shiva as Pampapati, lord of the Tungabhadra, worshipped here without a break since long before the Vijayanagara kings built their city around him. Its tall eastern gopuram is the first thing seen of Hampi from the bazaar road.
National monuments in Karnataka (22)
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Amrutesvara Temple, Amruthapura
A Hoysala temple of 1196 with one wall of lathe-turned pillars and one of sculpture.
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Banashankari Temple, Amargol
A Chalukyan temple near Hubli with two shrines and a lathe-turned porch.
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Bidar Fort
A Bahmani capital with a triple moat cut from laterite and underground channels that still carry water.
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Devanahalli Fort
The fort in which Tipu Sultan was born, with twelve bastions and a town inside.
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Doddabasappa Temple, Dambal
A Chalukyan temple on a twenty four pointed star plan, with no two mouldings alike.
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Gaurishvara Temple, Yelandur
A Vijayanagara temple in Chamarajanagar with a tall gopura over a quiet town.
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Gol Gumbaz
The second largest dome in the world without pillars, with a gallery where a whisper carries the full circle.
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Gulbarga Fort
A fort at Kalaburagi that the first Bahmani sultan enlarged in 1347 to hold his new kingdom.
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Hirebenkal
A megalithic site in Koppal with four hundred dolmens on a hill, nearly three thousand years old.
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Ibrahim Rouza
The tomb that is said to have suggested the Taj.
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Ishvara Temple, Arasikere
A Hoysala temple on a sixteen pointed star plan, and the only one of its shape.
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Jama Masjid, Bijapur
Ali Adil Shah's unfinished mosque, with a floor ruled into two thousand two hundred prayer spaces.
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Kaitabheshvara Temple, Kubatur
A Chalukyan temple at Kotipura with a stepped tank, hard to find and worth finding.
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Kasivisvesvara Temple, Lakkundi
A late Chalukyan temple with two shrines facing each other across one hall.
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Kolaramma Temple
A Chola temple at Kolar on an L-shaped plan, with an inscription of Rajendra.
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Lotus Mahal
A pavilion in the zenana enclosure with Islamic arches on a Hindu plan, and no clear record of what it was for.
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Madikeri Fort
The fort at the top of Madikeri, first raised by a Kodagu raja and rebuilt more than once since.
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Mahadeva Temple, Itagi
A Chalukyan temple of 1112 called the emperor among temples by an inscription on its own wall.
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Manjarabad Fort
A star shaped fort Tipu Sultan built in 1792, laid out so that no gun had a blind spot.
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Mirjan Fort
A laterite fort on the Aghanashini, built by a pepper queen, and green with moss.
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Srikanteshwara Temple, Nanjangud
The Dakshina Kashi, where Tipu Sultan sent an emerald necklace after the temple's god cured his elephant.
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Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace
Teak pillars and painted plaster, finished in 1791, the last four years of a court that fought the British four times.
State heritage sites in Karnataka (2)
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Raichur Fort
Doab country, and a fort that changed hands every generation.
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Udupi Sri Krishna Matha
The Krishna temple at Udupi, run as a living matha, with older shrines standing around it.
Famous places to visit in Karnataka (79)
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Aihole
A hundred and twenty temples in one village, treated by historians as the laboratory where Indian temple form was worked out.
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Almatti Dam
The main reservoir of the Upper Krishna project in north Karnataka, finished in 2005.
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Annapoorneshwari Temple
Annapoorneshwari, the goddess who feeds the world, in the hills above the Bhadra river in Chikmagalur district. The temple serves a meal to every pilgrim who arrives, and the goddess stands in gold holding a ladle and a pot of grain.
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BR Hills
Where the Western and Eastern Ghats meet.
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Baba Budangiri
Where coffee entered India, in seven smuggled beans.
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Badami Cave Temples
Four sixth century caves cut into red sandstone above a tank, Hindu and Jain, by the early Chalukyas.
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Banashankari Amma Temple
A temple near Badami with a stepped tank and a chariot festival in January.
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Bandipur National Park
Teak and dry deciduous forest on the old Mysore hunting reserve, joined to Nagarhole, Mudumalai and Wayanad.
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Bangalore Palace
Tudor revival in the middle of the city, built in 1878 by a man who had seen Windsor and wanted one.
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Bannerghatta National Park
Twenty five thousand acres on the city's southern edge, part of an elephant corridor that predates the city.
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Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary
A tiger reserve in Karnataka with Hebbe Giri, 1,875 metres, standing over it.
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Bijapur
The Adil Shahi capital, with a dome nearly as wide as St Peter's and a hundred smaller tombs around it.
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Brindavan Gardens
Terraces and a musical fountain below the KRS dam.
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Chamundi Hill
A thousand and eight steps up to a temple above Mysore, with a monolithic Nandi carved on the way at step seven hundred.
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Channapatna Toy Town
Lacquered wooden toys turned on hand lathes since Tipu Sultan brought Persian craftsmen to teach the trade.
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Chikkamagaluru
Where coffee first grew in India, on hills a Sufi saint is said to have planted with seven beans from Yemen.
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Chitradurga Fort
Nineteen gateways and seven concentric walls across a granite outcrop, called the fort of seven rounds.
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Cubbon Park
Three hundred acres of shade in the middle of Bengaluru, closed to traffic on Sundays since people asked.
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Dakshinamukha Nandi Tirtha Kalyani Temple
A small temple on Temple Street in Malleswaram, known to the neighbourhood simply as the Nandi Tirtha.
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Dattatreya Temple, Ganagapur
The Nirguna Math at Ganagapur, where Sri Narasimha Saraswati, revered as an incarnation of Dattatreya, is said to have lived for many years. His padukas are worshipped here, and pilgrims bathe at the meeting of the Bhima and Amarja rivers nearby.
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Dharmasthala
Run by Jains, for a Shaivite deity, with Vaishnav priests.
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Gokarna
A temple town with four beaches strung along a headland, each one quieter than the last.
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Gokarna Mahabaleshwar Temple
The atma lingam Ravana put down and could not lift.
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Halasuru Someshwara Temple
The oldest temple in Bengaluru, Chola in its core and Vijayanagara in its pillars.
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Hasanamba temple
Hassan takes its name from this goddess, Hasanamba, which means the smiling mother.
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Himavad Gopalaswamy Betta
The highest hill in Bandipur, with a Hoysala temple at the top and mist over it most mornings.
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Honnavar
A port at the mouth of the Sharavathi, with mangrove boardwalks, a backwater of islands and Eco Beach at the end of the road.
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Jaganmohan Palace
The Wodeyars' other house in Mysuru, two hundred metres from the main palace and now an art gallery.
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Jog Falls
The Sharavathi in four separate falls of two hundred and fifty metres, at their fullest only in monsoon.
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K. R. Market
The flower market at the heart of old Bengaluru, at its best before six in the morning when the marigolds arrive by the tonne.
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Kalasa
A temple town on the Bhadra at the foot of the Kudremukh range, where the road to Horanadu turns off through coffee.
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Karwar
Where the Kali river meets the sea below the Western Ghats, and Tagore wrote his first play.
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Kodachadri
A peak in the Western Ghats above Kollur, with a small temple and the Hidlumane falls on the way.
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Kollur Mookambika
The temple students come to before exams.
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Kotilingeshwara Temple
A temple at Kammasandra in Kolar holding one of the largest Shiva lingas anywhere.
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Krishna Raja Sagara
The dam the Wadiyars raised below the meeting of the Kaveri and the Hemavati, known to everyone as KRS.
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Kudalasangama
Where the Krishna and the Malaprabha meet, and where Basavanna, the twelfth-century reformer, lies buried at the water's edge.
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Kukke Subramanya
The serpent shrine under Kumara Parvatha.
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Kunchikal Falls
The Varahi dropping in a series of steps, the tallest fall in India, and mostly behind a dam now.
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Lalbagh Botanical Garden
Started by Hyder Ali in 1760, with a glass house modelled on the Crystal Palace and a rock three thousand million years old.
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Lalitha Mahal
A white palace built for the Viceroy's visit in 1921, now a hotel, above Mysore.
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Linganamakki Dam
Nearly three kilometres of dam across the Sharavathi, nine kilometres upstream of Jog Falls.
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Madikeri
The old Coorg capital in the mist, with a fort, a raja's tomb and coffee on every slope around it.
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Makalidurga
A hill fort on a granite dome north of Bengaluru, with a Shiva temple and a Nandi at the summit.
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Male Mahadeshwara Hills
Seven hills, and a folk epic sung to reach them.
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Manik Prabhu Temple
The samadhi of Shri Manik Prabhu, revered in the Datta tradition as an incarnation of Dattatreya, where the Viraja and Guru Ganga streams meet outside Humnabad. Datta Jayanti in December fills the village.
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Mekedatu
A gorge where the Kaveri narrows enough that a goat is said to have jumped it.
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Melukote
A hill town of Vaishnava scholarship since Ramanuja lived here in the twelfth century, with a temple on the rock above.
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Moodabidri
Eighteen Jain basadis in one town, the thousand-pillar one carved so that no two pillars match.
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Mullayanagiri
The highest point in Karnataka at nineteen hundred metres, with a small shrine at the top and coffee below.
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Murudeshwar
A forty metre Shiva on a headland with the Arabian Sea on three sides, visible from far down the coast road.
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Mysore Palace
The seat of the Wadiyars, lit by a hundred thousand bulbs on Sunday nights.
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Mysore Zoo
Sri Chamarajendra Zoological Gardens, a hundred and fifty seven acres a short walk from the palace.
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Nagarhole National Park
Rajiv Gandhi National Park, and the best tiger odds in the south.
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Nageshvara Temple, Bengaluru
A Chola temple at Begur whose inscription carries the earliest known use of the word Bengaluru.
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Namdroling Monastery
The largest teaching monastery of the Nyingma lineage, standing in the fields near Bylakuppe.
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Nandi Hills
Tipu Sultan's summer fort at fourteen hundred metres, where the cloud sits below you at dawn.
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Nisargadhama
An island the Kaveri makes for itself near Kushalnagar in Kodagu.
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Pigeon Island
A small heart shaped island in the Arabian Sea, nineteen kilometres off the Karnataka coast.
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Ramanagara
Sholay's rocks, and vultures still nesting on them.
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Ranganathaswamy Temple, Srirangapatna
The first of the three Ranganatha temples on the Kaveri, ninth century, inside the island fort Tipu died defending.
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Sakleshpur
The old rail line through the ghat, walked when it is safe.
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Sankey tank
An artificial tank in west Bengaluru, fifteen hectares of water between three neighbourhoods.
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Savandurga
One of Asia's largest monoliths, climbed before breakfast.
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Shivagange
A hill shaped like a lingam, with a ghee that turns to butter.
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Shivanasamudra Falls
The Kaveri splitting round an island into two falls, and the site of the first hydroelectric station in Asia, from 1902.
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Sigandur Chowdeshwari Temple
A temple to Chowdeshwari at Sigandur, on land ringed on three sides by the backwaters of the Linganamakki reservoir. For years it was reached by ferry, and pilgrims come from across Karnataka.
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Sringeri Sharada Peetham
The first of the four mathas, on the Tunga.
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St Mary's Island
Columns of basalt that cooled into hexagons eighty million years ago, on an island reached by boat from Malpe.
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St Philomena's Church
Neo gothic twin spires, modelled on Cologne.
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Talacauvery
The tank the Cauvery rises from, on one day a year.
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Talakadu
Temples buried in sand, and a curse that explains it.
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Tungabhadra Dam
India's largest stone masonry dam, built without cement, holding the Tungabhadra back as Pampa Sagar.
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Venugopala Swamy Temple
A twelfth century Hoysala temple at Hosa Kannambadi, beside the Krishna Raja Sagara water.
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Vidhana Soudha
Granite neo Dravidian built in 1956 to prove the state could raise something as grand as anything colonial.
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Vijayanagara
The imperial capital whose ruins spread over Hampi, sacked in 1565 and never rebuilt.
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Virajpet
The southern town of Coorg, laid out by a raja in 1792 as a market on the road to Kerala, and now the coffee planters' town.
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Yana Rocks
Two black karst towers in the middle of rainforest.
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Yellamma Temple, Saundatti
Renuka's temple on the hill above Saundatti, which took her other name, Yellamma.
Offbeat places in Karnataka (6)
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Ettina Bhuja
A peak in the Chikkamagaluru ghats, an easy walk up for the last two kilometres.
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Gokak Falls
A waterfall on the Ghataprabha, six kilometres out of Gokak town.
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Karanji Lake
A lake in Mysuru with a walk through aviary beside it, among the largest in the country.
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Tadiandamol
The highest point in Kodagu at 1,748 metres, and the third highest in Karnataka.
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Unchalli Falls
A walk down and a climb back, for one huge drop.
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Vibhuthi Falls
A fall in the Uttara Kannada forest whose water comes down over limestone, which is what the name means.
Hidden gems in Karnataka (62)
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Abbey Falls
Water dropping into a coffee estate ravine, reached across a hanging bridge, loud from June to September.
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Anegundi
Older than Hampi, across the river, still lived in.
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Antara Gange
A hill near Kolar with a perennial spring coming out of a stone bull's mouth.
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Belgaum Fort
A fort at Belagavi begun in 1204 and rebuilt by everyone who held the town after.
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Bellandur Lake
Bengaluru's largest lake, which has caught fire more than once, and is being cleaned.
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Bellary Fort
A fort in two halves on the rock above Ballari, an upper and a lower.
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Bhadra Dam
The dam at Lakkavalli that makes the Bhadra reservoir, on the edge of the Chikkamagaluru forest.
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Bull Temple
A Nandi four and a half metres tall carved from one granite boulder in the sixteenth century, when the town was new.
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Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary
Dry forest along the Kaveri gorge, with mahseer in the river and the memory of Veerappan.
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Charmadi Ghat
A ghat road of nearly thirty hairpins between Chikkamagaluru and Dakshina Kannada.
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Commercial Street
A shopping street since the cantonment days, still narrow, still crowded, and still cheaper than it looks.
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Dandeli Wildlife Sanctuary
Moist deciduous forest on the Kali river, with black panthers, hornbills and rapids run by raft.
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Devarayanadurga
A granite hill with two temples and forest, quiet on weekdays and full of Bengaluru on Sundays.
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Dharmaraya Swamy Temple
The Tigala community's temple in the old city of Bengaluru, and the start of the Karaga festival.
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Dr. Vishnuvardhan Smaraka
A memorial to the Kannada film star Dr. Vishnuvardhan on the Mysuru to H.D. Kote road, opened in 2023, with his statue, a gallery of more than six hundred photographs and a small theatre for film and drama.
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Dubare Elephant Camp
Forest department elephants, and the river to bathe them in.
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Gavi Gangadhareshwara Temple
A cave temple in Bengaluru where the sun passes between the horns of a stone bull each Makara Sankranti.
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Government Museum, Bengaluru
One of the oldest museums in India, 1865, with the Halmidi inscription in it.
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Harangi Dam
A masonry dam on the Harangi in Kodagu, one of the first streams the Kaveri picks up.
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Hebbal Lake
One of Kempegowda's tanks north of Bengaluru, now a bird lake ringed by flyovers.
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Hebbe Falls
A jeep through coffee estates, then a wade.
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Hesaraghatta Grassland
One of the last grasslands near the city, where the lesser florican and the wolf still turn up.
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Hesaraghatta Lake
A reservoir made in 1894 to water Bangalore, now a grassland and a fight about it.
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Honnamana Kere
The largest lake in Kodagu, with a temple to Honnamma who is said to have drowned herself in it.
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Honnemaradu
A backwater of the Sharavathi in Shivamogga, and where Karnataka learned to kayak.
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ISKCON Bangalore
A hill temple opened in 1997, its gopuram and glass tower an argument about what a modern temple can look like.
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Irupu Falls
A fall on the Lakshmana Tirtha in Brahmagiri, with a Shiva temple at the bottom of the path.
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Isha Yoga Center, Chikkaballapur
Isha's second centre, near Nandi Hills, where a 112 foot Adiyogi was unveiled in January 2023.
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Kabini dam
Nearly a kilometre of dam across the Kabini, built in 1974 in Heggadadevanakote taluk.
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Kadri Manjunath Temple
Bronze from the tenth century, still worshipped.
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Kali Tiger Reserve
Evergreen forest along the Kali river, where the road to Goa runs through the tigers' ground.
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Kavaledurga Fort
A nine walled hill fort in the Western Ghats near Thirthahalli, taken back by the forest.
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Kemmangundi
Krishnaraja Wodeyar's summer retreat in the Baba Budans.
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Kukkarahalli Lake
A lake in Mysore dug in 1864, with a walking path R K Narayan used.
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Kundadri
A monolithic hill in Shivamogga with a Jain temple on top and a pond beside it.
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Lingambudhi Lake
A lake dug in 1828 by a Mysore queen, now a bird sanctuary on the edge of the city.
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Mahakuta
A group of Chalukyan temples round a spring-fed tank, a few kilometres from Badami.
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Mangaladevi Temple
The temple Mangaluru is named for, founded by the Alupa kings.
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Maradi Gudda
A rocky hillock in the middle of Kollegal with a small Mahadeshwara shrine, a park and a green gazebo at the top, looking out over the town's roofs and lakes.
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Maravanthe Beach
Sea on one side of the highway, river on the other.
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Matanga Hill
The sunrise view over the whole ruined city.
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Om Beach
Two joined crescents of sand that from the headland read as the syllable Om, next to a temple town.
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Oriental Research Institute, Mysore
The building that holds the only known manuscript of Kautilya's Arthashastra.
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Pampa Sarovar
One of the five sacred lakes, where Pampa is said to have done penance to marry Shiva.
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Panambur Beach
The port, the kite festival and the sunset.
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Pushkarani Stepped Tank
A black schist tank found buried in 1980, its blocks numbered by the masons who cut them six centuries ago.
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Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary
Six islets in the Kaveri that Salim Ali persuaded the Mysore government to protect in 1940.
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Sakrebailu Elephant Camp
A forest department camp on the Tunga backwaters near Shivamogga, where the camp's elephants are bathed in the river.
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Sand Sculpture Museum
India's first museum of sand sculpture, on the road up Chamundi Hill. Around 150 sculptures in sand by a single artist, M. N. Gowri, among them Dasara elephants, gods and scenes from Mysuru's past.
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Sannati
An Ashokan edict found under a temple floor.
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Sathodi Falls
A fall in thick forest near Yellapur, reached by a bad road and worth it.
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Shanti Sagara
The largest tank in Karnataka, made in 1907, also called Sulekere.
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Shettihalli Rosary Church
A Gothic church of the 1860s that the Hemavathi reservoir floods every monsoon and gives back every summer.
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Sigandur Bridge
A cable-stayed bridge across the Sharavathi backwaters between Ambaragodlu and Kalasavalli, opened in 2024. It put Sigandur on the road for the first time, where once the only way across was the ferry.
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Sirsi Marikamba Temple
A temple of 1688 in Uttara Kannada with a biennial fair that fills the town.
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Srirangapatna Fort
Tipu Sultan's island capital, breached in 1799, with the spot where he fell still marked inside the walls.
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St Aloysius Chapel
A chapel at Mangaluru painted floor to ceiling by an Italian Jesuit in two years.
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St Francis Xavier's Cathedral, Bengaluru
The cathedral on Residency Road, twin-spired, seat of the archbishop.
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St Lawrence Shrine, Attur
A basilica near Karkala with a nine day feast in January that fills the fields.
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Ulsoor Lake
A Kempegowda era tank kept full by the city, with islands and a temple at the northern end.
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Varuna Lake
A quiet lake on the edge of Mysuru, kept for early walks and the birds that come to the water.
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Vitthala Temple
The stone chariot and the pillars that ring at different pitches when struck, at the far end of the Hampi ruins.
Collecting in Karnataka
What are the best places to visit in Karnataka?
LOQAH lists 182 places in Karnataka. The best known include Gomateshwara, Agumbe, Brahmagiri Wildlife Sanctuary, Chennakesava Temple and Hampi. Each has a stamp of its own to collect when you are there.
How many LOQAH stamps are there in Karnataka?
182, and more are added over time. Each place has LOQAH's carefully crafted stamp of its own.
How do I collect a stamp in Karnataka?
Open LOQAH at the place and get its stamp. LOQAH checks where you are once, at that moment; at the place itself the stamp is confirmed on site, with a gold badge.
I have been to places in Karnataka before. Can I add them?
Yes. In Earlier trips, choose Karnataka and swipe through its stamps, or import your Google Timeline. Each one goes into your volume with the date, if you know it.
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