Bangalore is the obvious starting point for exploring Karnataka, it sits near the geographic centre of the state, connected by expressway, national highway and rail to everything that makes Karnataka worth exploring. Which is considerable. Karnataka is among the most varied states in India: it has the ruins of a medieval empire in Hampi, the colonial grace of Mysore, the misty coffee hills of Coorg, a coastline with both pilgrimage beaches and empty ones, and the Western Ghats running the length of its western edge.

This Karnataka tour package from Bangalore is designed to give you a genuine cross-section of the state rather than a surface-level loop. Nine days sounds like a lot until you look at the map and understand how much ground you're covering, and how different each destination is from the last.

You'll start in Mysore, three hours south, and spend two days with its palace, its hills, its markets and its food. Mysore is the kind of city that surprises people who expected a tourist circuit and find instead a genuinely beautiful, well-organized place with excellent filter coffee and one of the finest palaces in Asia. From Mysore, the route turns southwest into Coorg, the coffee country of Kodagu district, where the Ghats come closest to what people picture when they say 'Western Ghats.' Green, steep, wrapped in mist and coffee fragrance, Coorg is the emotional midpoint of this tour, where most people slow down and ask if it's possible to extend the trip.

Then northwest to Hassan for the Hoysala temples, Belur and Halebidu, which are arguably the finest medieval temple architecture in South India and yet receive a fraction of the attention they deserve. The stone carvings here represent centuries of craft at a level that's difficult to comprehend standing in front of them. From Hassan, north to Hampi: the ruined capital of the Vijayanagara Empire, a UNESCO site scattered across a boulder-strewn landscape along the Tungabhadra river. Hampi at dusk, when the rocks go orange and the river mirrors the sky, is the kind of scene that makes you understand why empires chose their sites carefully.

The final leg brings you back toward Bangalore via Bangalore city sightseeing, because many travellers who use Bangalore as a transit hub never actually spend time in it, and that's worth correcting.