Gagan Chukki Falls, Sivanasamudram

Our trip to Mysore on last October long weekend was the first pleasure trip after we got our daughter. She has almost reached a year and is ready to join me. En-route to Mysore, we visited Sivanasamudram (also called Sivasamudram). I heard about the water falls from one of my colleague and decided to check it out.

River Cauvery flows through this place towards its journey to find sea and creates two waterfalls called Gagan Chukki Falls and Bara Chukki Falls. The best season to visit the falls is around July-August when Cauvery river is full. There was not too much water this time of the year, but it was good enough to enjoy.

Sivasamudram is located in Mandya district in Karnataka state where the Cauvery river splits to two and forms a small island and the two water falls called Gagan Chukki (90 meters) and Bara Chukki (69 meters). Both the falls are only km away from each other. We visited only Gagan Chukki falls since we had to reach Mysore by that night. From Bangalore, the falls is around 135 kms.


On way to Mysore on Bangalore-Mysore highway we have to take a left at Maddur. This road goes to Kollegal and Sivanasamudram is around 32 kms from the highway. The road from Maddur is good till Malavalli and after that it is terrible to say the least.

We started around 1pm and after some stops reached the falls by around 5:30pm. Once we reached Sivanasamudram, we had to take a left through a small road. There is an arch at the main road which is the entrance to the falls area. We asked the villagers for directions to reach the falls. After we cross the village, we enter the river basin which is maintained by Karnataka electricity board. There is a hydroelectric project on the river Cauvery here which is suppose to be the first hydro electric station in Asia for supplying power to Bangalore (1906) and Kolar Gold fields and Mysore.

At the entrance to the area, there is an electricity board outpost where you have to register yourself. The entrance is closed after 6pm. After the entrance you will see the hydro power station on the right. It seems the power station is built on a side stream of Cauvery and not the main one. We didn't see the full Cauvery river there. After crossing the stations, we had to cross the river stream to reach the watch tower.

Watch tower is built below the surface area to get a better view of the falls. We have to get down several steps from the road to reach here. We also saw many monkeys all over the place when we first reached here.

Monkeys on top of the watch tower.
There were many, small and big all over the place when reached there.

From the top, we could see the river coming down from the wild towards the fall. We could also see a Dargah nearby. We heard that it is a famous worship place frequently visited by many.

To get a good view of the wall, we went down the many steps to reach the watch tower. The falls from this place is magnificent to see and I could take good pictures here. This is my first planned shots of a water falls. They have come out well, but still has lots of scope for improvement :).

One of my first water fall shots

This one little zoomed out