Monsoon Waterfalls in India: A Letter From the Editor

Why we made a waterfalls issue for the most difficult month of the year.

Dear reader,

There is a sensible case against this issue. July is the month when India’s most famous waterfalls are hardest to reach. Forest departments close trails. Railways and police discourage people from walking where they should not. Ghat roads slip, fog sits on the viewpoints for hours, and the brochure photograph you had in mind may simply refuse to appear. A cautious editor would schedule waterfalls for October, when the water is still running, the sky is clearer and the paperwork is lighter.

We chose July anyway, and I want to explain why.

The falls are a monsoon thing

A waterfall in the Western Ghats is not really a place. It is an event. For most of the year, many of these falls are a fraction of what they become in the rains. The cliff is there in April, and the river is there, but the thing that people travel for, that roar and spray and white curtain, belongs to the monsoon. To write about Dudhsagar or Jog or Athirappilly in any other season is, in a sense, to write about their memory.

So we wanted to meet them in their own season, with the difficulty included. Not to pretend it is easy, but to help you decide, honestly, whether it is for you, and to give you the tools to do it well if it is.

What we have tried to do

This issue has three famous names at its centre, and I suspect many of you opened it for one of them. We have tried to treat each with care: to separate what is generally true about Dudhsagar from the stories repeated about it, to show that Jog looks different depending on where you stand, and to describe Athirappilly in the hours after the crowds have thinned.

But I am most proud of the pages that move away from the famous names. A piece on a walk to a smaller fall. A short appreciation of a waterfall that will never be on a poster. A careful look at the towns you sleep in, because a waterfall trip is mostly lived away from the waterfall. And a frank piece on what the roads do in July, written by people who have sat in the traffic.

A note on rules

You will notice that we are careful, perhaps even repetitive, about rules and safety. That is deliberate. Monsoon access to waterfalls in India is managed by forest departments, district administrations, railways and police, and their decisions change with the weather and the year. We have not printed fees or timings, because they would be wrong by the time you read them. Instead, we tell you who decides, and urge you to check.

I would rather you missed a waterfall than ignored a closure. Every season brings sad news from somewhere in the Ghats: someone who stepped past a railing, swam where the current was strong, or walked a track they had been told to avoid. None of them meant any harm. Please be the traveller who comes home.

A note on patience

If this issue has a single lesson, it is patience. The cloud lifts, eventually. The road reopens. The jeep queue moves. A waterfall seen after a morning of waiting is somehow louder than one seen at once. Build slack into your days, choose one good base over four rushed ones, and accept that some of the best moments will happen while you are waiting for the view, over tea in a roadside stall, with rain on the roof.

Why the Ghats matter

It is worth remembering what the Western Ghats are. This long chain of hills runs down the western side of the peninsula, catching the south-west monsoon as it comes in from the Arabian Sea. The rain that falls on its slopes feeds rivers that flow both west to the sea and east across the Deccan. The waterfalls are the places where those rivers drop off the edge of the plateau. They are, in other words, a visible sign of the whole system that waters much of southern and western India.

When you stand at a viewpoint in July, you are watching a small part of that system at full stretch. I find that thought makes the waiting easier.

Travelling lightly

Monsoon waterfall country is also forest country, home to wildlife and to communities who live with the rains every year. Please travel lightly. Take your rubbish away with you, keep music low, stay on marked paths, and buy what you can from local stalls and homestays rather than outside chains. Small habits, repeated by thousands of visitors, decide whether these places stay beautiful.

Write to us

If you travel to any of the falls in this issue, we would love to hear how it went, especially if the rules, roads or access have changed since we wrote. Your letters keep our coverage honest, and they help the next reader.

Thank you

As always, this issue is the work of many people: writers who drove the ghat roads, readers who sent us their stories, and an editorial team who argued, kindly, about every sentence. Thank you to our guest writer for the afternoon in the spray, and to everyone who wrote in after our earlier waterfall coverage with corrections, suggestions and warnings. Several of those letters shaped what you are about to read.

Before you turn the page

If you take one thing from this letter, let it be this: go slowly. Choose a fall, choose a town, give yourself an extra day, and check the official rules before you set out. The waterfalls have been doing this for a very long time. They will wait for you.

Pack a good raincoat, a spare pair of socks and more time than you think you need. Leave the itinerary loose enough that a closed road becomes a story rather than a disaster.

I hope you hear them roar.

Warmly,

Khushi Anand, Editor