Karwar Beach

A three-star resort operated by Sterling Holidays on the coast about 5 km south of the town centre, and the largest branded hotel in Karwar. It is a package resort rather than a town hotel: expect to be driven in and out for everything in Karwar itself.

Homestay on Ocean Deck Road at Sadashivgad, north of the river and roughly 8 km round from the town centre, near the estuary rather than the town beach.

Guest house on the Sadashivgad side of the Kali, named for the view it is built to face — the river mouth where the Kali meets the Arabian Sea, with the islands beyond it. About 6 km round by road from the town centre, which puts it away from the town beach and beside the estuary instead.

A Mahamaya temple about 7 km round from the town centre, on the north side of the river. Mahamaya is the goddess in her form as the great illusion, and temples to her are a Konkan-coast pattern rather than an inland Karnataka one. A neighbourhood temple in use, not a monument, and it shares its name with a hotel on the Link Road nearby.

A Shiva temple roughly 4. It is a working local temple with no published history, no timings and no ticket — the ordinary religious furniture of a Konkan town rather than a visitor attraction, and worth a look only if you are passing.

A temple to Mahaladeva and the Mahasati goddess, out at about 9 km round from the town centre and the furthest of the town's recorded shrines. Mahalasa and the sati goddesses belong to the same Goan-Konkan religious world as the Shantadurga temple on the fort hill. Nothing about its history or its hours is published anywhere we could check.

A small eating house near the Kali River Garden at Kodibag, at the north end of the town about forty minutes' walk from the centre. "Hotel" here means what it means all over coastal Karnataka — a plate-meals restaurant, not a place to sleep. Named for Annapurneshwari, the goddess of food, which on this coast usually signals a vegetarian kitchen; it publishes nothing, so check before you count on it.

A roadside restaurant on the Panvel–Kochi–Kanyakumari highway — NH-66 — at Kodibag, on the northern edge of town about half an hour's walk from the centre. A highway kitchen rather than a destination, and a straightforward stop if you are driving in from Goa. Nothing about its hours or menu is published.

A restaurant at Kodibag, beside the Indian Bank and near the Radha Krishna temple, and one of the closest eating houses to the town centre — about thirteen minutes on foot.

A meat restaurant on KEB Road opposite the Sagar Complex, a quarter of an hour's walk from the town centre, and one of the handful of non-vegetarian kitchens in the middle of town. Karwar's cooking is Konkan and Goan more than Kannadiga — coconut, cashew and ginger in the gravy — and the everyday version of it is eaten in rooms like this rather than in hotels.

An eating house on INP Road at Baithkol, by the fishing harbour about fifty minutes' walk south of the town centre. Baithkol is where the catch actually lands — mackerel, sardine, seer, prawns, clams and crab — and the kitchens around the harbour road are the reason to be down there at all. Nothing about it is published; go and look.

5 km out. Useful if you are already on that road; not somewhere to walk to from the beach.

A meat kitchen at Arga, on the coast road well south of the town — the same Arga whose beach went into naval property when the base at Binaga was built. About 9 km round from the town centre, so a drive rather than a walk.

Hotel.

That is not decoration: Christianity came to this coast with the Portuguese in Goa in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and Karwar's Catholic families descend from those congregations. A working parish; visit outside Mass.

A Shantadurga temple on the Sadashivgad hill, about 6 km round from the town centre and on the way up to the fort. Shantadurga is one of the great Goan goddesses — the peacemaker form of Parvati — and her presence here is a plain marker of how far the Konkan cultural world reaches south of the state border. A living temple: shoes off, and it is used, not exhibited.

The tomb of Sayed Shamsuddin, called Shah Karamuddin Auliya, on the Sadashivgad side of the river — and the single oldest thing in the Karwar story that you can still stand in front of. When the Portuguese captured and burned the fort at this river mouth in 1510, they named the place Forte de Piro after the dargah of a Sufi saint they found there, and this is that saint. Nearly five centuries later it is still a working shrine.

The government inspection bungalow in the town centre, eleven minutes' walk from the seafront — the old Public Works rest house of the kind every district headquarters in India has, built for touring officials and let to the public only when it is free and only through the department. Worth knowing about, not worth planning around.

A public park about fifteen minutes' walk from the town centre — a neighbourhood green rather than a destination, with the ordinary benches, paths and evening walkers of a small district town. Free and open; nothing is published about its hours.

A statue of Swami Vivekananda about 3. It is a civic monument of the kind found in most Indian district towns rather than a historic one — a five-minute stop if you are already going past, and no more than that.

The closest of the town's parks to the centre, eleven minutes on foot — a children's playground rather than a garden, and the obvious release valve if you are travelling with small children and the beach is too hot in the middle of the day.

A riverside public garden at Kodibag, at the north end of the town where the Kali comes down to the sea, about 3.5 km round from the centre. It is named in the district's own list of places of interest in Karwar. What it is for is an evening hour by the water with the bridge and the estuary in front of you — free, unticketed, and busiest at sunset.