Shivanasamudra Falls

This past Sunday I went with my fellow trainers to see the Shivanasamudra Falls (now that's a mouthful) that are on the outskirts of Bangalore about three hours away from city center. Despite having been the main organizer and advocate of the trip, I was this close to staying behind when Sunday morning came around because I had spent the entire previous day er, disagreeing with some food in my system. Eventually I talked myself into going and figured I'd just take that gamble of throwing up on the bus in front of all my colleagues in a foreign country. Because yolo.

A hearty breakfast and a few rounds of mafia later, we found ourselves stepping out of the bus in what was pretty much the middle of nowhere. For being such a well-known attraction attraction, the falls were surprisingly devoid of the usual hawkers, vendors, and restaurants that set up shop near tourist sites. I breathed a sigh of relief as we descended down an extensive set of stairs to the base of the water, happy for the opportunity to just see what we'd come here for.

Though they didn't come even close to the grandeur of Niagara or Angel, the falls were nevertheless quite beautiful. We hopped into corocles (think woven floating baskets) for 50 rupees apiece and were paddled close to the base of the falls where the spray produced a much-appreciated mist as it was a hot day outside. Then the man rowing the corocle spun us around and around in it as we giggled and exclaimed "whee!" and felt all of five years old.

After the relaxing corocle ride, we were ready for playtime. We scrambled over some rocks and crossed a small stream to another area where we got even more up and personal with the water. Bow chicka wow wow.

At one point I was sitting alongside the friendly folks in the above picture for about thirty minutes, chatting aimlessly and enjoying the rush of water that had by now completely soaked us all. In retrospect I'm certain it was quite dangerous to be that close to the rapidly rushing water, but at the time nobody paid any mind. I'm finding that I love that about India - that as my roommate Scott says, everything sort of operates under a controlled chaos. If this waterfall was in the States, I'm certain that whoever owned it would have learned from one lawsuit too many not to let people run and scramble around these wet slippery rocks but here there was nobody who cared about lawsuits and regulations and caution tape. You were just responsible for yourself.

We were also joined by some monkey friends. I'm relatively certain that I will never get tired of observing monkeys - they are so damn fascinating, not to mention they make for excellent photography subjects.

Living in Bangalore doesn't afford many opportunities to enjoy the great outdoors so I'm really glad that we went and were able to frolic about the falls for a few hours. Hope you enjoyed this post - more pictures here.