States
Maharashtra’s hills fill up during the monsoon, which reverses the national pattern
The Sahyadri escarpment turns into waterfall country for three months, and weekend traffic out of the big cities follows it in exactly the season most of India shelters from.
By Nadia Haddad4 min read
An escarpment catches the rain before anything else does
The western edge of the Deccan plateau in Maharashtra is a long basalt escarpment, rising sharply from the coastal strip and then running back inland as high, flat-topped country. Air coming off the Arabian Sea in the monsoon meets that wall, is forced upwards, cools, and drops an enormous quantity of water on the seaward face.
Because the escarpment is steep and the rock beneath it is layered basalt, the water does not soak away. It runs, and it runs over rock ledges, which is the entire explanation for the waterfalls that appear in their hundreds through those months and vanish again well before the end of the dry season.
The plateau behind the edge behaves differently. Rain falls there too, but the total drops off quickly as you move east, and within a couple of hours’ drive inland you are in country that is dry and brown while the escarpment is still under cloud. The rainfall gradient across that short distance is remarkable.
The season is a genuine local tradition
Elsewhere in India the monsoon empties the tourist towns. Here it fills them, because the population of two very large cities is within reach of the escarpment and has treated the wet months as the season to go up there for generations. The hill towns along the edge are busiest in precisely the weeks the rest of the country avoids.
What people go for is straightforward: cloud pouring over a cliff edge, temporary waterfalls, a green that lasts only these months, and the hill forts that sit on flat summits all along the range. There are a great many of those forts, and walking up to one in the rain is a widely shared regional pastime rather than an exotic undertaking.
It follows that the crowd is domestic and concentrated on weekends. Midweek in the same places is quiet and frequently better, since the roads are clear, the viewpoints are empty, and the accommodation that is full on Saturday is negotiable on Tuesday afternoon.
Wet basalt is the actual hazard
The risk here is not the rain. It is the surface. Basalt with a film of water and algae on it is genuinely slippery, and much of the walking on these hills is on rock steps cut long ago, worn smooth by use, often steep and frequently without a handrail or a clear edge. People are hurt on them every season.
Moving water is the other one. Streams that are ankle-deep in the morning can rise quickly after a heavy spell upstream, and the pools at the base of waterfalls have currents and undercuts that are invisible from above. Drownings at popular falls are a recurring problem across the region, which is why some sites are periodically restricted or closed outright.
None of this argues against going. It argues for footwear with a real sole, for treating a closure notice as information rather than as an obstacle, and for staying out of moving water. A ridge in thick cloud also deserves rather more respect than its modest height suggests it should get.
The traffic is part of the experience whether you like it or not
Weekend congestion on the routes up from the coast and out of the cities is substantial, and it has become substantial enough for local authorities to intervene at particular spots with parking restrictions, one-way arrangements and occasional entry limits. Several popular waterfalls are managed far more tightly now than they were a decade ago.
Leaving very early is the only real answer, and it is the answer locals use. A start before dawn puts you at the top before the queue forms and gets you back down before the return traffic builds, which turns a frustrating day into a good one at the cost of some sleep.
Public transport does part of the job. Several of the escarpment towns sit on railway lines climbing from the coast to the plateau, and arriving by train avoids the road problem entirely, which on a wet weekend is not a small advantage at all.
The best fortnight arrives after the rain stops
When the monsoon withdraws, the escarpment holds its green for several weeks while the sky clears, and that overlap is the quietest good period of the year. Views that spent the whole season inside cloud come back, the temperature is still mild, and the weekend crowd has largely gone home.
It is also when the high plateaus flower. Certain flat lateritic surfaces in the region carry a brief, dense flowering once the rains ease, and the best-known of them are now managed with visitor limits and controlled paths because footfall was damaging the thin ground the flowers grow in. Timing and booking arrangements are set locally and change, so check before travelling.
By the end of the dry season the same hills are brown, hot and largely deserted, which is a perfectly reasonable time to walk them if you start early and carry water. The forts are still up there. Everything else has drained away.
Common questions
Is trekking in the Sahyadri during heavy rain reasonable?
It is a long-established regional practice and thousands do it every weekend, but the wet rock and fast-rising streams are real hazards rather than theoretical ones. Go with people who know the route, use footwear with genuine grip, and turn back when visibility or water levels say you should.
When exactly does the waterfall season run?
Broadly through the monsoon months and for a few weeks afterwards, but the specific timing depends on when the rain arrives and how it is spread, which varies from year to year. Many of these falls are entirely seasonal and dry up quickly once the rain stops.
Are the flowering plateaus open to anyone?
Access to the best-known sites is regulated, with limits on numbers and designated paths, because unrestricted walking was damaging the soil. Arrangements are managed locally and have changed more than once, so the current official position needs checking rather than assuming last year’s rules still hold.
Contributing editor, Traveology
Nadia writes about states, hills, coast & islands, mostly the parts other people skip and prefers a plain explanation to a clever one.
