Hogenakkal Falls – Road Trip from Bangalore | Coracle Ride

Hogenakkal Falls – Road Trip from Bangalore | Coracle Ride. Hogenakkal Falls is a wonderful one day trip from Bangalore. You must be thinking how this name came? The word Hogenakal is formed of two Kannada words hoge and kal. When the water falls on the rocks it appears as if hoge (smoke) is emanating from the top of the kal (rock) because of the force of the water, hence Hogenakkal (smoking rocks).

Where is Hogenakkal Falls?

Hogenakkal Falls is on the Kaveri River, in Dharmapuri District of Tamilnadu. And very near to Karnataka border, 127 km from Bangalore.

Hogenakkal Falls is a must visit place near Bangalore.

How to reach?

Hogenakkal is well connected via buses, best way is to drive or hire a car and go.

Best time to visit

The best season to visit is soon after the monsoons, when the river is in full spate. You can visit from October to March.

We visited Hogenakkal falls during November. We didn’t do much planning and researching about the place. After visiting Hogenakkal Falls, we understood that we should do proper planning for a day trip too.

Here are my experiences from our day trip from Bangalore to Hogenakkal Falls.

Firstly about the Food – being a vegetarian, you don’t get any food in Hogenakkal except soft drinks, Tender coconut, and cut fruits on the road side. If you a fish lover, then you must visit without a miss. Because you get fresh fish fry! No doubt in that. If this place had one or two good restaurants then it would be awesome.

Secondly, the actual way or I can say way to view point of Hogenakkal Falls was closed because of some reason so we had to take Coracle ride to get glimpses of waterfalls.

After driving from Bangalore, we wouldn’t be satisfied without getting a view of waterfalls, and we decided to take coracle ride to see the waterfalls view. So if you are visiting during rainy season then do check whether the way to view point is open or not?

And one more thing which may disappoint tourists might be the people getting oil massages in the open areas with very minimum clothes on them.

Coracle ride at Hogenakkal Falls

Coracle rides are the main attraction here apart from the view of Hogenakkal Falls. But be careful before getting to coracle, because when we had been there were no life jackets. Coracle ride will take more than an hour. We had reached there around 11.30 and per coracle (which can accommodate 4 people) we paid around 1200 bucks after bargaining with coracle person.

You can ask coracle person to spin the coracle just like the they show in movies. 🙂 Mostly they will only do as they did for us and many others too.

We started in coracle, it was around 12pm, & it was sunny also. Kind of different experience to go on coracle, but we were super tired, tanned, & energy level had reached zero.

Kaveri River water level was so high, that is why the falls height is less; and even the tree is submerged as you can see in the below pic.

Note: During peak rainy season, coracle rides will not be there.

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What else you can do at Hogenakkal Falls?

Hogenakkal is also the good place to try out your swimming skills. The water is quite challenging. Tourists can also go for trekking on the nearby surrounding hills. The water from the fall flows towards the Mettur Dam which is also known as the Stanley Reservoir.

Video of Hogenakkal Falls – Coracle Ride:

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Truth or Myth :

The waters of the Hogenakkal Waterfall is considered to have medicinal properties that can rid anyone of their ailments. This is somewhat attributed to the fact that a number of herbs and medicinal plants are present in the close proximity of the falls, thereby imparting it their goodness. People get oil massage and bathe in the water of Hogenakkal Falls.

Is it true or just a myth? Let me know in the comments.