Syntheri Rocks

The forest shrine at Ulavi (Joida taluk) around the samadhi of Channabasavanna — one of the largest Lingayat pilgrimage centres in Karnataka, with the Akka Nagalambike cave nearby.

A wide waterfall where a tributary of the Kali drops into a pool amid forest near Yellapur, backed by the Kodasalli reservoir.

A remote forest waterfall on the Kali river ~13 km from Yellapur, in elephant country reached past a forest check-post.

A large hydro dam on the Kali river at Joida, backing up a scenic reservoir in the Kali Tiger Reserve forests.

A large forest sanctuary on the Kali river in the northern Ghats, part of the Kali Tiger Reserve — known for white-water rafting, hornbill birding and wildlife including elephants, gaur and the elusive black panther.

A Western-Ghats sunset viewpoint ~17 km from Yellapur overlooking the Bedti (Gangavali) river valley.

A waterfall near Yellapur where the Bedti (Gangavali) river drops in two leaps of around 200 m into a wooded gorge, seen from a viewpoint.

A ~74 m waterfall on the Sonda river near Siddapur, plunging into a deep evergreen valley, with a Shiva temple at its head.

The Vadiraja (Sode) matha at Sonda ~20 km from Sirsi — one of the Ashta Mathas of Udupi and a major Dvaita pilgrimage centre around the Vadiraja Brindavana, with a Jain basadi nearby.

A Sonda-era hill fort of 1715 above the mouth of the Kali river, about 5 km from Karwar, with the Shantadurga temple and a 17th-century dargah on the way up and the Arabian Sea and its islands below.

Over a thousand Shiva lingas and Nandis carved into the bed and banks of the Shalmala river ~14 km from Sirsi — exposed in the dry season and submerged in the monsoon.

Karwar’s main promenade beach, named for Rabindranath Tagore, who stayed here in 1882 and wrote a chapter of his memoirs about it — with the decommissioned missile boat INS Chapal preserved on the sand as a walk-through warship museum and a retired Tu-142 patrol aircraft beside it.