Dudhsagar Falls
Interesting facts
- The railway past the falls climbs at a gradient of 1 in 37, one of the toughest on Indian Railways, so heavy trains need extra banking locomotives.
- The ghat section has three intermediate stations, Caranzol, Dudhsagar and Sonaulim, where trains have no commercial halts.
- Most freight on the line is iron ore carried down from inland Karnataka to Goa's ports for export, with coal and fertilisers going back up.
- About 2 kilometres from the Tambdi Surla temple, Tambdi Falls is only slightly lower than Dudhsagar but rarely visited because of its difficult access.
- Two plants, a variety of Amorphophallus commutatus and the grass Glyphochloa veldkampii, are known only from the protected area around the falls.
- Around 128 plant species in the park are endemic to the Western Ghats, peninsular India or India as a whole.
- Nomadic buffalo herders known as the Dhangar live within the parkland around the falls.
- In 2019 a plan to double the railway through the sanctuary sparked the #SaveMollem protests, and the double-tracking project was later cancelled.
- In May 2019 camera traps in the park photographed two tigers that had come over from neighbouring Karnataka.
Why it is worth it
Dudhsagar — "sea of milk" — earns its name in the monsoon, when the Mandovi (Mahadayi) River pours off the edge of the Western Ghats in a broad white sheet and breaks into several tiers on its way down. With a total drop of roughly 310 metres and a width of around 30 metres, it ranks among the tallest waterfalls in India. The falls sit at the head of a crescent-shaped valley on the Goa–Karnataka border, wrapped in thick forest, and the river below them continues west towards Panaji and the Arabian Sea.
What makes the scene unlike any other waterfall in the country is the railway. The Londa–Vasco da Gama line climbs through the Braganza Ghats, a 26-kilometre mountain section between Castle Rock in Karnataka and Kulem in Goa, threading a string of tunnels. Midway it crosses the face of the falls on a bridge, so that trains pass directly in front of the cascade. Before the Konkan Railway opened, this ghat line was the only rail link into Goa, and descending trains still pause at the small stations along it for mandatory brake tests. A painting of the falls by the Portuguese traveller António Lopes Mendes shows the cascade already drawing attention in the early 1850s.
The falls lie inside the Bhagwan Mahaveer Sanctuary and Mollem National Park, Goa's largest protected area, declared a sanctuary in 1969 with its core designated a national park in 1978. Its evergreen, semi-evergreen and moist deciduous forests shelter gaur, leopards, Malabar giant squirrels and slender lorises, hornbills and king cobras, and more than 700 species of flowering plants have been recorded in and around the park. The same reserve holds the 12th-century Mahadev Temple at Tambdi Surla, a small basalt shrine attributed to the Kadamba dynasty.
Getting there
The nearest town is Curchorem, about 23 km away, and Margao lies roughly 46 km to the west; Panaji is about 60 km by road. The nearest airport is Goa's Dabolim International Airport (GOI), about 52 km away. Road access is from Kulem (Collem) in Goa along a forest jeep track to the foot of the falls; the railway stations at Kulem and Castle Rock bracket the ghat section on the Londa–Vasco line.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Dudhsagar Falls is a four-tiered waterfall on the Mahadayi River in the Indian state of Goa. It is 60km from Panaji by road and is located on the Belagavi–Vasco Da Gama rail route about 46km east of Madgaon and 80km south of Belagavi . Dudhsagar Falls is perched at the top of a crescent shaped valley and surrounded by pristine forests, and it is amongst India's tallest waterfalls with a height of 310 m and an average width of 30 metres (100 feet).
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