Sathodi Falls

Sathodi Falls (pronounced "sat-HO-dee"; I've also seen it spelled Sattodi Falls) is a classically shaped rectangular 15m tall waterfall that felt like it was off the beaten path as far as foreigners like us were concerned. In fact, it was similar to

From the car park (see directions below), there was a well established walk of about 1km each way, I think. To our right as we walked towards the falls was a large reservoir where the Kali River was held up by the Kodasalli Dam (we could also see this reservoir during unpaved section of road leading down to the car park).

The trail gently descended in the direction of the stream feeding the reservoir before veering left past some lookout tower while roughly paralleling the stream. There was even a stretch of trail where there were canals on either side (I'm guessing for erosion control) of the walkway.

Once near the end of the trail, there was a shelter and picnic area with a partial view of Sathodi Falls, but we were able to carefully walk a little further to get a little bit closer to the falls.

We didn't get all the way to the falls as the jumble of rocks and stream made it a little dicey to proceed any closer so we had to make do with our partially obstructed and distant view of the falls. The Indian students (which explained why we noticed many of them were couples) from the bus that was also parked at the car park also didn't venture further so I guess we were wise not to take any more risks for a better view.

And to further reinforce the notion that hardly any foreigners come here was the observation that Julie and I routinely drew stares from these folks until a few of them made conversation with us.

Directions: Sathodi Falls is located in the Kallaramarane Ghat near the town of Yellapur (about 32km from town). There's a well-signed turnoff just outside of Yellapur town (in the direction of Hubli or Hubballi, which is opposite the direction of Magod Falls) where the falls is another 25km further from that turnoff.

The last 5km was on a pretty rough unsealed dirt road where passenger cars should make it, but it was certainly out of our driver's comfort zone as there were several stretches where he was cursing when he wasn't totally sure if the car could make it some spots. In other words, caution was definitely warranted here.

We came here from Magod Falls, and it took us about 90 minutes to finally make it to the car park for Sathodi Falls.

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Our driver was certainly relieved when he reached this car park

Lush surroundings on the trail to the falls

The walkway leading closer to the falls

As close to the falls as we had got

Walking back towards the car park but you can see the trail is flanked by canals

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Brief bottom up sweep of the falls from as far as we could go on the walk


Top down sweep of the falls ending at the rock-strewn rapids well downstream of the falls

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TRIP REPORTS

• November 14, 2009

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• Magod Falls

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