Shivamogga (Shimoga)

Shivamogga sits on the Tunga river at the edge of the Malnad — the 'hill country' of Karnataka, where the Western Ghats catch the monsoon and the land turns to areca gardens, paddy and evergreen forest. The town itself is a busy district centre. What surrounds it is the reason to come: the Sharavathi gorge, the rainforest at Agumbe, and a run of rivers — the Tunga and the Bhadra meet near here to become the Tungabhadra.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this was the realm of the Keladi Nayakas, who ruled from Keladi and Ikkeri and later from Bidanur, and whose queen Chennamma held off Aurangzeb's forces in the 1690s. Their granite temples stand in small villages that see few visitors today.

Malnad culture is Kannada literary culture. The poet Kuvempu grew up at Kuppalli, in the forest near Thirthahalli, and the district's new airport carries his name. Agumbe, a village at the top of a ghat, is one of the wettest places in South India and the home of a long-running rainforest research station known for its king cobras. It also stood in for Malgudi when Shankar Nag filmed R. K. Narayan's stories for television in the 1980s, and it still looks the part.

The food is built for wet weather. Akki rotti, rice-flour flatbread patted out by hand, comes with chutney and coconut; kadubu are dumplings steamed in leaves; soppina saaru is a thin greens curry, and holige a sweet stuffed flatbread. Coffee is filter coffee, drunk strong, and in the monsoon every house makes something from jackfruit.

Jog's 253-metre drop depends on the Linganamakki dam upstream: come after a good monsoon, early in the day, before the valley fills with cloud. Visiting time at the main viewpoint is now limited, so arrive with your photographs planned. Get to Sakrebailu by around eight, when the elephants are bathed in the Tunga. In Agumbe, watch the sunset from the ghat viewpoint, then stay for the night sounds. And carry leech socks from June to October.

Agumbe and the Sharavathi valley are some of the most biodiverse forest in India, and their roads kill snakes, frogs and lizards every monsoon night. Drive slowly after dark, stay on trails, and never handle a snake for a photograph. At Sakrebailu, watch the elephants rather than feeding or riding them, and buy areca-leaf plates and local honey from village cooperatives.

From Jog the road drops down the ghats to the coast at Honnavar and then north to Gokarna — a temple town with quiet beaches, about three hours from the falls, where the Malnad rain finally reaches the sea.