Cauvery Basin: Hogenkal waterfalls

At the quiet village of Hogenakal nestled in the forested Melagiri Hills is a waterfall where the Chinnar River meets the cauvery. Despite its remoteness the place was buzzing with people who had come to bathe in the curative waters. Apparently properties from the forest the Cauvery travels through, in what was Veerappan territory, are what make the waters healing. To get to the falls themselves I had to cross one fork of the river by coracle and then walk down into the gorge along a slippery path where the river had, in the monsoon months, moulded the rocks into smooth sculptures. We pushed off from a small sandy cove and rowed up stream towards where the second fork of the river plunged down in frothy, bubbling cascades, its spray glistening into ephemeral rainbows that appeared and disappeared as the river buffeted our coracle. I could see both why films used this location as a backdrop for love scenes and how real life tragic lovers could easily end their lives here. The boatman, puffing and straining, continued to bring us closer to the thunderous falls, until a fellow passenger, shouted out to him.
"I am my mother's only son. I am my mother's only son."

The boatman lifted his paddle and the Cauvery took the coracle gently down stream between high, barren, granite cliffs on which fishermen perched, dangling their lines into the water. There seemed to be only uninhabited forest stretching into the distance as far as the eye could see and so I was surprised to see, up on the bank, a solitary drinks shack. I thought it an odd place for a bar until I remembered that one side of the river was Tamil Nadu and the other Karnataka. As I watched, a man staggered down from the outdoor bar into his coracle, stopped a passing boat, a mobile tobacco shop, bought a smoke and, with a loud, tuneless song, made his way in meandering circles back to the Tamil Nadu bank.