Karnataka Tour Packages

On Sundays and public holidays from 7 pm to 8 pm, according to the Mysore Palace Board, and every evening of the ten-day Dasara festival, when Karnataka Tourism says the lights stay on for about two hours. On other evenings, a 45-minute sound and light show ends with about 15 minutes of illumination. About 97,000 bulbs outline the building. The Mysore Palace tour includes advice on timing your visit for the lights.

Mostly, but not every hour of every day. The royal family's rituals close the palace to visitors for some hours on a few days and for whole days at the festival's height, around Mahanavami and Vijayadashami, when entry can be limited to Dasara pass holders. The Mysore Palace Board posts the closures each year, and we check them before placing your visit. Otherwise the palace opens daily from 10 am to 5.30 pm.

Shorter than it was. Mysuru is about 140 km south-west of Bengaluru, and the six-lane Bengaluru–Mysuru Expressway, opened on 12 March 2023, was built to bring the journey down from around three hours to about 75 minutes. Bengaluru's own traffic adds time at either end. The Mysore day trip from Bengaluru is still a full day, with the palace at its centre and Chamundi Hill if time allows.

For the essentials, yes: the Virupaksha temple, still in worship, the Vittala temple with its stone chariot, and the Royal Centre's palace platforms and elephant stables fit into a long guided day. Two days, as our Hampi guide suggests, add Matanga Hill's view over the ruins and the quieter corners without rushing. The site is open from sunrise to sunset, and the Hampi ruins tour times its route around the midday heat.

Yes. The Archaeological Survey of India lists the Pampapati temple, as Virupaksha is also known, as still in worship and the largest standing temple at Hampi; its tall entrance tower was built under Krishnadeva Raya, who ruled from 1509 to 1530. Dress modestly, take your shoes off where asked and keep your voice down, as at any working temple, and let your guide lead you through it.

It opens every day from 10 am to 5.30 pm. Shoes come off before you go in, and the palace runs a free footwear stand and lends wheelchairs and umbrellas. Government-approved guides work inside, though on the Mysore Palace tour your private guide comes with you. Allow time on Sunday and public-holiday evenings if you want to stay for the lights.

By vehicle, with stretches on two wheels if you like. The protected area covers nearly 26 sq km, and the Sacred Centre around the Virupaksha temple, the Vittala temple and the Royal Centre lie well apart, so it pays to move between them by bicycle, moped or auto-rickshaw rather than on foot alone. The Hampi ruins tour includes a private vehicle to and around the site and help arranging those rides; their hire, like a coracle, is extra.

If time allows. The day is built around a guided visit to Mysore Palace; Chamundi Hill, at whose foot Mysuru stands, adds its temple and a view over the city when the schedule stretches to it. If you want the hill, the markets and the palace lights without hurrying, stay a night in Mysuru and take the Mysore Palace tour instead.