Karnataka and Hyderabad

Karnataka is a microcosm of the most colorful and fascinating aspects of India, presented at a comfort level that is efficient as well as sumptuous. The place has probably hosted human civilization as long as any place on earth. Throughout the state (in such places as Belur, Halebid, and Hampi) are some of the greatest religious monuments in India. The climate is as varied as the culture, ranging from humid to dry and cool, the result of a geography that combines sea coast with tropical uplands and arid zones.

Most of Karnataka's 53 million people are called Kannadigas after their language, Kannada, and they are often intensely proud of their heritage. Of Dravidian stock, as are most people in the South, the Kannadigas tend to be darker than the Hindi-speaking Indians to the north. In villages, women wait with their jugs at the well, which doubles as the social center. Men, often wearing lungis (colorful saronglike wraps), work in the rice fields, walking slowly behind oxen dragging plows. The climate makes it possible to live partially outdoors—village huts are often of rudimentary construction, and people frequently set up their beds outside.

The simplicity of Karnataka's countryside is balanced by the grand palaces and formal gardens of Mysore, the youthful cosmopolitanism of Bangalore, and the relics—both Hindu and Muslim—of centuries of royal living. Even the outdoors is impressive if you spend a few days on safari in Nagarhole National Park or trek between jungle camps along the banks of the Kaveri River.

Although Bangalore and Mysore are well connected by express trains and comfortable buses, there are advantages to traveling by car: the countryside along the way is verdant with palms and rice fields (known as paddies), and you'll often see colorfully dressed women washing clothes in the roadside streams. On the flip side, timid passengers may be put off—at least at first—by the Indian driver's way of roaring around tight curves on roads crowded with giant buses, plodding oxcarts, and men pushing bicycles laden with bunches of coconuts.

Hyderabad, to the north in the neighboring state of Andra Pradesh, is in some ways a twin sister of Bangalore, over 500 km (311 mi) away. It's known more for the technological businesses that have sprung up here in the past decade than for its often-dramatic history, which have nevertheless left some wonderful, impressive Muslim monuments in its wake.

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