Had an amazing 2-3 day trip to Hampi.
Roads are excellent throughout, and so off-peak driving will be roughly 7 hours... 4 hours from Indiranagar,Bangalore to Chitradurga byepass and 2 hours from there to Hosapet, and then on under an hour drive due to local traffic, narrow(er) undivided state highway roads with 3-4 higher-than-normal kind of speed-breakers. Upto Chitradurga bye-pass, it is the good old familiar Bangalore-Davanagere-Hubli-Pune-Mumbai highway NH-48, and from Chitradurga, it is the Hampi Expressway which is a 4-lane (separate 2-lane and 3-lanes in important stretches, like near exits for small towns/villages) where you can smoothly cruise at 80+ kmph speed (guess 90kmph is the speed limit) and there are 2 tolls in this 120-125 kms stretch.
Add 30 minutes of breakfast break at famous Pavitra Thatte Idly shop in Tumkur byepass, and 15-20 minutes of fuel and Tungabhadra backwaters viewpoint right before the landmark Hosapet tunnel just before entering the town limits.
Since all Hampi and Hosapet hotels were fully booked (upto Jan 3rd as I heard from them), we walked in to the new 3-star hotel of famous Kyriad group right next to Gangavati bus stand (in the town center) on the other side of Hampi. You need to just continue on NH-50 towards Koppal-Bijapur(Vijayapura) and take a turn-off towards Gangavati-Bellary just before Koppal (where there is a major intersection with right turn-off towards Hubli as well):
https://www.kyriadindia.com/kyriad-gangavathi.html
Hotel is brand new, very friendly staff, ample private car parking space with security, excellent rooms and complimentary buffet breakfast.
If you are interested to visit the popular Kishkinda Water Park bordering Sanapur lake, you can get discount vouchers (we got 2 tickets free for 2 tickets purchase, for our family of 4) as well:
https://kishkindawaterpark.com/
Not detailing out Hampi part of the trip which was the usual full-day guided tour. But on top of the same, besides water park mentioned above, we had a wonderful late evening safari at Atal Bihari Vajpayee zoo in the jungle area amongst the remote-ish hills about 15 minutes away from Hampi towards Bellary. Very healthy group of tigers, including white tigers which you can see right next to the safari bus as he stops close to the feeding area. Then there were lions and lioness in another safari area. There were separate area of safari where you see varieties of deers and peacocks/peafowls too. After safari, you will be dropped on the entrance of zoo area where you walk in one direction for about 45 minutes seeing a variety of animals, birds and reptiles. Zoo safari bus will pick you up from the other end of walkway and drop you back to the main gate/ticket counter/parking area.
On our way back, we went to Munirabad Lake View area (other side of Tungabhadra from Hosapet) where we can step into the waters of Tungabhadra dam reservoir. Played in water for some time and you can walk a few feet into the reservoir lake, feeding some small fishes and taking some filmy snaps as the whole area is like a few frames from some photographically well-made movie. Then crossing the river, we took the T.B.Dam mini bus to go the hilltop for the viewpoint and had a mesmerizing panoramic view of sorrounding geography (TB Dam, Endless water till horizon in the mega reservoir, Hosapet city aerial view, a few canals running from TB Dam to the nearby villages and small towns, and the bifurcation of river into 2 and then rejoining again creating a small rocky island in the flow).
Only low part of the whole trip is the heavy incoming traffic to Bangalore starting right from Tumkur byepass till Yeshwantpur circle(upto IISc). A 50-kms in this stretch took about 2 hours to cover, compared to 5 hours for the 300 kms before that in less than 5 hours.