Zishaan Hayath Drive: The Lost Kingdoms Trail

Route Map

Six days, and a thousand years of temple building taken in the order it actually happened. The Chalukyan valley first, where in the sixth and seventh centuries architects were still arguing about what an Indian temple ought to look like. Aihole is the sketchbook — a hundred and twenty of them scattered through a working village. Pattadakal is the finished painting, northern and southern styles set side by side in one compound. And Badami is where they stopped building altogether and cut into a red sandstone cliff instead.

Then east into the boulders. Seven hundred years later Vijayanagara built what Persian and Portuguese visitors compared to Rome. In 1565 a confederacy of sultanates spent six months taking it apart. What survives sits in several thousand square kilometres of granite that the fourteenth century decided was Kishkindha of the Ramayana.

Running the loop this way round earns two things. Badami, which has the weakest hotels on the route, becomes one night rather than two. And the drive home is 340 km from Hampi instead of 500 from Badami.

Day	Route	Distance	Highlights	Night stay
01	Bangalore → Chitradurga	200 km 3 h	Seven concentric walls and nineteen gateways built into a hillside that was never taken by force. Ask for the narrow passage where Onake Obavva held off an army with a wooden pestle	Chitradurga
02	Chitradurga → Aihole → Pattadakal → Badami	275 km 5 h	Across the plateau into the Malaprabha valley. Aihole in the early afternoon, where Indian architecture was being invented in public, then Pattadakal, where two traditions were set against each other on purpose	Badami
03	Badami → Hampi	140 km 3 h	The four cave temples in morning light, cut into red sandstone above a green tank, with langurs who consider the place theirs. Bhutanatha at the water's edge, then the Deccan crossing east through sunflower and cotton	Hampi
04	Hampi	40 km local	Vittala and the stone chariot at opening time, the royal enclosure after — Lotus Mahal, the elephant stables, the stepped tank. Hemakuta hill at sunset, where the ruins finally arrange themselves	Hampi
05	Hampi and across the river	50 km local	Coracle across the Tungabhadra to Anegundi, older than Hampi and still lived in, and up Anjanadri hill where Hanuman is said to have been born. Daroji at dusk for the sloth bears	Hampi
06	Hampi → Bangalore	340 km 5.5 h	Home through Hospet and Chitradurga on good highway, with a stop at Davangere for benne dose as the last act	Bangalore

Notes

All tarmac except the village lanes around Aihole and Mahakuta, which are narrow, patched and occasionally shared with a bullock cart wider than the road. Ground clearance helps; four-wheel drive is unnecessary.

Badami has the weakest hotels on the route, which is why this version stops there once rather than twice. The caves are better in morning light in any case, so they get the start of day 3 rather than the end of a long drive.

Three nights at Hampi is not indulgence. The site is enormous, the good hotels are here, and with a child the difference between two days and three is the difference between marching and wandering.

Day 2 is the longest at 275 km, but almost all of it is highway before the interesting part starts.

This is the dry Deccan in the dry season. Everything ends up faintly red by the third day.