Kunchikal Falls
   Karnataka, India

Kunchikal Falls is a virtual mystery compared to most of the other waterfalls along the west coast of India. The falls are found along a large river, below a significant hydroelectric project yet there seems to be very little information about the falls available. What is known is that the river is almost entirely diverted into the adjacent hydroelectric system and the falls, which appear to consist of four distinct tiers over a run of about 1,500 linear feet, rarely flow heavily as a result. Below the falls the river formerly cascaded down a steep gorge filled with huge boulders, which might appear to be part of the falls at cursory glance, but without the full natural volume of the river in place, it's hard to think that was actually the case.

HISTORY AND NAMES

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• Kunchikal Falls is the Unofficial name of this waterfall

Our thoughts

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When we first uncovered information about this waterfall, the data suggested the falls were nearly 1,500 feet tall which would make it the tallest waterfall in India which we have yet documented. When Google Earth started providing better quality imagery at the location of the falls, it became clear that this likely wasn't the case, but it was hard to be sure because the terrain isn't rendered correctly. As it currently stands, we can't say for sure exactly how tall the falls are - it could be as little as 400 feet or as much as about 800 feet. We know for sure it isn't anywhere close to 1,500 feet tall as we had previously thought - that's a measure of the head of the penstocks feeding into the generating house at the bottom of the gorge - and this has been confirmed by several first hand accounts. But there is still very little information about exactly how significant (or not) the falls may be, so we can't say much more with any certainty.

View this location in Google Earth

Kunchikal Falls is shown in the center. Additional nearby waterfalls (if any) can be found in the list below.

Find More media

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Search for pictures of Kunchikal Falls on: Flickr Pbase Smugmug Webshots Google Images Photobucket

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User comments

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