Jog Falls looks like two different waterfalls depending on the month. In July it is four torrents filling a cliff. By April it can be a few thin threads of water. The falls, also called Gerusoppa Falls, Joga Jalapata or Jogada Gundi, are on the Sharavati River in Sagar taluk of Shivamogga district, Karnataka, where the river leaves the Western Ghats plateau and drops 253 m (830 ft) in four separate falls named Raja, Rani, Roarer and Rocket. By total height it is usually ranked third in India, after Nohkalikai Falls in Meghalaya (335 m) and Dudhsagar Falls in Goa (310 m). The World Waterfall Database puts it 36th in the world among free-falling waterfalls. The monsoon explains the change: about 95% of the basin's rain falls between June and September. Since 1964 the Linganamakki Dam, between 6 and 9 km upstream depending on the source, has also controlled how much of that water reaches the cliff edge. This guide follows Jog through one water year, from the first monsoon storms to the dry heat of May.
June and July: The Southwest Monsoon Fills the Sharavati
The Sharavati is short. It runs only about 128 km (80 mi), rising at Ambutheertha in Thirthahalli taluk and reaching the Arabian Sea at Honnavar. Local legend says the god Rama shot an arrow (shara) into the ground there to bring up water for Sita, which gives the river its name. It is one of the few rivers in India that flows west, and most of its basin lies in the Western Ghats. Its basin covers about 2,986 km² across Shivamogga and Uttara Kannada districts, on the rain-soaked western side of the Ghats.
When the southwest monsoon arrives in June, moist air from the Arabian Sea is forced up the face of the Western Ghats and drops huge amounts of rain. Across the basin, average annual rainfall ranges from about 6,000 mm on the western side to 1,700 mm in the east. At Agumbe, a Western Ghats village in Thirthahalli taluk, the taluk where the river rises, June averages more than 1,600 mm and July more than 2,400 mm. Afternoon humidity rises to about 60% during the monsoon, after falling below 35% in the dry months. The rain gathers in the Haridravati, Yenne Hole, Nandihole and the river's other tributaries, which cross reddish, acidic lateritic soils on their way to the main stream. Our explainer on how monsoons work sets out the pressure pattern behind it.
July at Jog: Raja, Rani, Roarer and Rocket at Full Flood
The river's course just above the falls explains why so much water arrives at one point. From Ambutheertha the Sharavati heads north-west past Fatte Petta. Below Pattaguppe it picks up the Haridravati from the right, and above Barangi the Yenne Hole joins from the left. Then it turns sharply west towards the edge of the plateau. Everything that falls on the upper basin in the monsoon funnels into that one bend before the drop.
The rain is also concentrated in a narrow belt. In July, Shivamogga city, east of the hills, averages only about 183 mm. Honnavar, where the Sharavati meets the sea, averages about 1,161 mm. Agumbe, in the forested Malenadu belt of the Ghats, averages about 2,432 mm. Jog is where the river drops off the western edge of the plateau, towards the wetter, seaward end of the basin's 6,000-to-1,700 mm rainfall gradient.
By July the falls are at full strength. Above the drop the Sharavati spreads across a rocky bed about 230 m (250 yards) wide, then reaches a chasm about 290 m (950 ft) deep. Raja, the main fall, comes down in one unbroken column of about 250 m. Roarer meets it halfway down after first crashing into a deep rock basin. Rocket shoots out in a series of jets, and Rani slides down the rock face in a sheet of foam. Below the gorge the river runs on past Gerusoppa village, about 30 km (19 mi) away, and reaches the sea at Honnavar. In a strong monsoon the four can merge across the cliff, and Jog briefly changes from a segmented waterfall into a single plunge.
August to October: Linganamakki Reservoir Fills and Spills
Since the 1960s the river's natural pattern has been overlaid by an engineered one. The Linganamakki Dam was finished across the Sharavati in 1964, in Linganamakki village of Sagar taluk. It is about 2.4 to 2.7 km long, depending on the source, and is said to hold about 4.29 km³ (151.5 thousand million cubic feet) of usable water. Its catchment of nearly 1,992 km² covers most of the river's upper basin, and canals from the Chakra and Savahaklu reservoirs add to it. Filling it drowned about 50.6 km² of wetland and 7 km² of dry land. Honnemaradu, an island in the reservoir, is now a base for canoeing, kayaking and birdwatching.
From the dam, a trapezoidal canal about 4.3 km long, able to carry about 176 m³ of water a second, takes water to the Talakalale Balancing Reservoir for the power stations. Much of what falls on the upper basin is therefore caught in storage before it reaches the cliff. The falls are at their mightiest when the dam releases water, and in the monsoon season those releases add to the flow over the edge. Year to year, the best weeks at Jog depend on how full Linganamakki is as well as on how hard it is raining. After the releases, the rains ease off in September and October. Agumbe still averages almost 290 mm in October, mostly from thundershowers after the monsoon withdraws.
The water held back is used to make electricity. A hydroelectric station near the falls has run since 1948. It was first called the Krishna Rajendra project, after the then Maharaja of Mysore, and later renamed the Mahatma Gandhi Hydroelectric Project. Its capacity is 120 MW, among the largest in India when it was built. It was served by the Hirebhaskara Dam until 1960. The much larger Linganamakki reservoir, which followed ideas of the engineer M. Visvesvaraya, later took over that role. Farther downstream, the Gerusoppa Dam, finished in 2002 near Gerusoppa village in Uttara Kannada, is 56 m high and 545 m long. Its four 60 MW units use the same water again before it reaches Honnavar.
November to May: Dry Season in the Sharavati Valley Wildlife Sanctuary
Once the rains stop, the falls fade fast. From December to March almost no rain falls: Agumbe averages under 16 mm a month from December to February, and afternoon humidity drops below 35%. The cliff is left as mostly bare rock, streaked with a few thin falls. With so little water, the gorge itself is clear to see. The Karnataka State Tourism Development Corporation has built about 1,400 steps from the viewpoint down to the foot of the falls. The two main viewpoints are the front panorama at Jog-Kargal in Shivamogga district and the British Bungalow viewpoint beside the falls in Siddapur taluk of Uttara Kannada, so the falls can be seen from two districts.
Sagara, the taluk town about 30 km from the falls, had 54,550 people in 2011. Its economy rests on the trade in areca nut, the main cash crop, along with rice, spices such as pepper, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg, cocoa and forest products, and it rises and falls with the prices of those crops. Talaguppa, 13 km from Jog, is the nearest railway station. The dry season is also a good time to see the forest around the reservoir. Part of the basin was declared the Sharavati Valley Wildlife Sanctuary on 20 April 1972. It covers 431.23 km², including 128.7 km² of the Linganamakki reservoir, and rises from 94 m to 1,102 m at Devarakonda on its southern edge. Mean annual rainfall there is about 4,500 mm. Outside the reservoir, the sanctuary is divided into a core zone of 74.33 km², a buffer zone of 170.67 km² and a tourism zone of 57.53 km². Its evergreen forest includes tall dipterocarps such as Dipterocarpus indicus, with Hopea parviflora and rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia) in the semi-evergreen belts. The forest is a refuge for the endangered lion-tailed macaque. Tiger, leopard, dhole, sloth bear, sambar, the Malabar giant squirrel and the king cobra also live there, along with three species of hornbill. A survey of the basin recorded 23 amphibian species, 15 of them found only in the Western Ghats. A catfish, Batasio sharavatiensis, was first described from near Jog Falls itself.
April is usually the hottest month, with average daily highs of 35.8°C and lows of 22.2°C. With the water low, the rock of the gorge is exposed. The basin's rocks are Precambrian: metamorphic rocks of the Dharwar Craton, among the oldest in India and rich in iron and manganese, alongside granites and granodiorites of the peninsular gneiss. Then in May the first pre-monsoon storms arrive. Agumbe averages 181 mm that month, the streams start running again, and the year begins over. The plateau the river falls from is described in our guide to the Deccan Plateau, and the range that catches the rain in our guide to the Western Ghats.