South India Road Trip 2025: Malvan to Pune in a Polo, with Parents

This was the trip we had been postponing for years. A proper family road trip — me, Harshit, and both sets of parents — in a single Volkswagen Polo, with Harshit doing every kilometre of the driving. Thirteen days, eleven stops, one coastline, two Karnataka hill towns, the giant Bahubali at Shravanabelagola, the ruins at Hampi, and a final crawl back up to Pune.

The brief from the parents was simple: jain temples first, everything else around them. So most nights we slept in Jain dharamshalas — clean, simple, vegetarian, almost always cheaper than a hotel and a hundred times warmer. Touristy stops fit in between. We started on 20th December 2025 in Malvan and finished on 1st January 2026 in Pune with a deliberate “do nothing” day.

Day 1: 20th December
Driving Down to Malvan

We pulled out early and pointed the Polo south down the Konkan. The first leg is the longest stretch of road on the whole trip and there is no clever way around it — you just put the music on, rotate snacks, and let the coast slowly arrive. By the time we reached Malvan it was already evening and the air had that salt-and-fried-fish smell that tells you you’ve definitely left the city behind.

Dinner was simple and we crashed early. The parents were the real heroes — ten hours in a Polo and they still asked if there was a temple to visit before bed.

Day 2: 21st December
Malvan — Tarkarli, Sindhudurg & the Beach Day

This was the proper Malvan day. Tarkarli beach in the morning — long, clean, and surprisingly empty for a Sunday. We watched the boats go out, walked the sand for a while, and resisted (politely) the scuba operators trying to push us into the water. With parents along, the calculus on water sports changes.

Later we did the boat across to Sindhudurg Fort — Shivaji’s sea fort sitting on its own little rock island. The boatman doubled as a guide and the ramparts were the kind of place where you put your phone away for ten minutes just to look. Veg thali for lunch, ice cream the parents pretended not to want, and back to the room by sunset.

Day 3: 22nd December
Malvan → Gokarna

Down the coast into Karnataka. The drive to Gokarna is one of those routes where the road keeps flirting with the sea — you turn a corner and the Arabian Sea is back, you turn another and it’s palms again. We reached by afternoon and went straight to the Mahabaleshwar Temple for darshan. Gokarna is a pilgrim town that has, somewhere along the way, also become a backpacker town, and the two crowds pass each other on the same lane without quite acknowledging each other.

We did not do the famous beach trek — Om, Half-Moon, Paradise — because parents and steep cliff paths is not a combination I was going to suggest. Kudle Beach at sunset was enough. Hot bhajiyas, cutting chai, the sky doing its show for free.

Day 4: 23rd December
Karkala & Varanga — The Jain Day

This was the day the trip’s real spine showed itself. We drove inland to Karkala for the Gomateshwara monolith — a 42-foot statue of Bahubali standing on a hill since 1432, smaller cousin to the more famous one at Shravanabelagola but no less striking when you climb up and find yourself standing at his feet. Quiet, wind-blown, very few other visitors. The parents lit incense; I took pictures I knew I’d come back to.

From Karkala we drove to Varanga for the Kere Basadi — the lake temple. The Basadi sits in the middle of a small lake and you reach it on a flat little boat punted across by a temple-hand. The whole experience is about five minutes long and you remember it for years. Built around the 12th century, dedicated to Neminatha, and one of the quietest temples I’ve been inside in India.

Night was in a Jain dharamshala — spotless, fan working, hot water at 6am, total bill less than dinner-for-two in Mumbai.

Day 5: 24th December
Drive into Coorg

Up early and into the Western Ghats. The road climbs out of the coastal plain and the temperature drops about a degree every twenty minutes — by the time we hit Madikeri the sweaters were out and the windows were down for entirely different reasons. Coorg smells of coffee even before you see a plantation, which is, I think, the whole point.

Quiet evening at the homestay. Hot soup, a fireplace that genuinely worked, parents enjoying themselves visibly.

Day 6: 25th December
Coorg Full Day — Plantation, Falls, Temple

Christmas morning in a coffee plantation is a slightly absurd, very pleasant thing. We did a plantation walk in the morning — the host explained Arabica vs Robusta, picked a few beans for us to smell, showed us the pepper vines climbing up the same trees. Then Abbey Falls (touristy but worth the twenty minutes), and on the way back the Omkareshwara Temple in Madikeri — the one with the unusual Indo-Islamic dome that always confuses first-time visitors.

Lunch was the local akki roti and pandi curry — pork for those who eat it; the parents stuck to veg and were perfectly happy with the bamboo shoot curry and the akki roti, which is rice flour flatbread cooked on a hot tava and improves with ghee.

Day 7: 26th December
Coorg → Mysuru

Down out of the hills and into Mysuru. There is exactly one thing you have to do on your first day in Mysuru and that is the Mysuru Palace — the Indo-Saracenic one, the official residence of the Wadiyars, the one that gets lit up with 97,000 bulbs on Sundays. We were not there on a Sunday so we got the daytime version, which is plenty — the durbar hall, the painted ceilings, the stained glass, the marble floor your bare feet remember for the next two hours.

Evening walk on Devaraja Market for the flowers, fruits, and sandalwood soap that everyone buys and nobody regrets. Dinner: thali, again, and nobody complained.

Day 8: 27th December
Shravanabelagola — The Giant Bahubali

This was the temple day everyone had been building up to. Shravanabelagola — the 57-foot monolithic statue of Bahubali (Gomateshwara) carved out of a single granite outcrop in 981 CE, sitting on top of Vindhyagiri Hill. To reach him you climb 614 steps barefoot up the bare rock. We did it in the early morning when the granite is still cool enough to walk on. The parents took it slow; we all made it.

Standing at his feet at the top, with the plains stretching out in every direction, is one of those moments that does not need to be explained to anyone who has done it. The statue itself is over a thousand years old, calm in a way modern things are not, and the silence on the hill at 8am is almost embarrassing.

Back down, a long lunch at the Jain bhojanalaya at the base, and then on the road again.

Day 9: 28th December
Drive to Hampi

The drive from Shravanabelagola to Hampi is long and the landscape changes character about three times along the way — cultivated plains, then dry scrub, then the boulder country that tells you you’re close. We checked in late afternoon on the Hampi Bazaar side, walked down to the Virupaksha Temple for the evening aarti, and called it a day.

Day 10: 29th December
Hampi Full Day — Vijayanagara Ruins

You cannot do Hampi justice in a day. We tried anyway. Hired an auto-driver-cum-guide for the morning circuit — Virupaksha in detail, the Vittala Temple with its stone chariot and the musical pillars, the King’s Balance, Hemakuta Hill, and the Queen’s Bath. Afternoon for the Royal Enclosure side — Lotus Mahal, Elephant Stables, Mahanavami Dibba.

Hampi is an empire that ended in 1565 and is still telling its story. The scale of it — 26 square kilometres of ruins, give or take — only really lands when you stand on a hill and look at boulder fields with temple towers poking out of them. Sunset from Hemakuta Hill is the photograph everyone takes and it is, embarrassingly, exactly as good as the photographs suggest.

Day 11: 30th December
Hampi → Kolhapur

Long driving day. We made it up to Kolhapur by evening for darshan at the Mahalakshmi (Ambabai) Temple — one of the Shakti Peethas and the spiritual centre of the city. The temple has the kind of energy that does not need to be marketed; the queue moves, the chants carry, the bell sounds louder than you expect.

Dinner was the obvious one — Kolhapur is famous for its misal and a sweet shop in every lane. Parents asked for less spice. The cook smiled politely and ignored the request. It was still excellent.

Day 12: 31st December
Kolhapur → Pune

Shorter drive, easier day. We reached Pune by afternoon. New Year’s Eve in Pune with parents was deliberately low-key — a quiet dinner, a walk on FC Road, and back to the room before midnight got noisy. The Polo got a wash. Harshit, who had driven every kilometre of the last twelve days, finally let his shoulders down.

Day 13: 1st January
The Chill Day

We had built this day in on purpose. No driving. No temple. No fort. Late breakfast, longer lunch, a Pune cafe in the afternoon, and an early dinner. The parents called relatives and reported, slightly exaggerated, on every place we had seen. Harshit slept. I went through the photos.

If you take one thing from this diary, let it be this: build a chill day into the end of any road trip. The trip is not finished on the last drive; it is finished on the day after, when you sit still and let it settle.

Practical Notes from the Polo

• Car: Volkswagen Polo, five adults, manageable but tight. Soft bags over suitcases.
• Driver: Harshit drove the whole route. We rotated only the navigation, not the wheel.
• Stay: Jain dharamshalas wherever available — Karkala, Varanga, Shravanabelagola, Kolhapur. Clean, vegetarian, very affordable. Book ahead by phone; most do not show on the booking sites.
• Food: Pure veg the whole trip. Easy on this route — every dharamshala bhojanalaya serves an unlimited thali for very little money.
• Roads: Konkan coast to Karnataka is good but slow. Karkala to Coorg climbs a lot. Hampi roads are fine. Kolhapur to Pune is highway.
• Pace: 13 days felt right. Don’t try to do this in 10.