Highlights
- Boating, kayaking and other water sports on the reservoir.
- Sunset and hill views from the bund.
- An easy add-on to a Belur–Halebidu day.
Yagachi Dam is a reservoir on the Yagachi river 3.5 km north of the Chennakeshava temple at Belur, on the Chikkamagaluru road, built for irrigation and now a popular water-sports and picnic spot backed by low green hills.
The calm backwater is used for boating, kayaking and jet-skiing, and the bund is a quiet place for a sunset stop on the way to or from Belur.
Road km to Belur; ghat roads and traffic vary — allow extra.
October to February; late afternoon for the light. The reservoir is fullest just after the monsoon.
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Sun and moon are calculated for this location and shown in IST. Photography windows are the hour around sunrise and sunset; the sunset bearing is degrees clockwise from true north. Moon phase is accurate to about half a day.
Verified hotels, homestays, restaurants, experiences, sights, shops and rentals around Yagachi Dam — commission-free, with direct contact. Filter by what you need.
The dining room attached to Sumukha Residency on Lakshmi Devi Temple Road, 629 m from the temple gate and opposite the government hospital. It is a vegetarian multi-cuisine room — south Indian breakfast, north Indian thalis at midday — and it takes the overflow from the residency's function hall, so it can be busy on wedding dates. The residency itself is on Hassan district's official hotel list at 08177 222181; the restaurant's own website is no longer live, so hours are unverified.
A vegetarian eating house 214 m from the temple gate, on the shop street between the compound and the bus stand. "Udipi hotel" is Karnataka's own shorthand for a plain-fronted vegetarian place serving idli, dosa, and a rice plate at midday, and this is one of the handful within a three-minute walk of the temple. We could not find a published menu or hours from the business itself, so check on the door before you count on it for lunch.
A lassi and juice counter on the shop street that runs from the temple gate towards the bus stand, 180 m from the main steps and the closest cold drink to the compound. OpenStreetMap has it as a drinks stall and we could find no page of its own, so treat the hours as unverified — this is a stop on the way out of the temple in the middle of the day, not somewhere to plan around.
A vegetarian restaurant out on the Hassan road about 1.7 km north-east of the temple, in the small cluster of eating houses near the bypass junction where the buses and the lorries stop. Too far to walk from the compound in the middle of the day — 2.3 km on the footway, nearly half an hour — but a straightforward halt if you are driving in or out. No published hours we could verify.
A non-vegetarian eating house on the Hassan road, 2.4 km from the temple gate and the furthest of the three in that cluster. Worth knowing about precisely because it is not vegetarian: nearly everything within walking distance of the Chennakeshava compound is, and biryani in Belur means coming out this way. Hours unverified — we found no source belonging to the business.
A small eating house in the same roadside cluster as Udupi Grand and Hotel Hamza on the Hassan road, about 1.7 km from the temple. These three are what is open early and late when the shop street by the temple gate has shut; none of them has a page of its own, so everything past the position and the kind of place it is would be guesswork, and we have not guessed.
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Yagachi Dam sits in Belur, and these rank everything verified across the town rather than this one spot — built from the same listings shown above, ordered by the strength of the source evidence behind each entry rather than by anyone's star score. Every card shows how many places are really on it. Nobody pays to appear.
Ordered by a real routed walk from Yagachi Dam itself — the walking network, not a line on a map, which understates a real walk by about half again. A different question, and a different answer, from the town-wide lists below.
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Add a nearby businessEntry: Water-sport charges on site
3.5 km north of the Chennakeshava temple at Belur on the Chikkamagaluru road — a few minutes by car or an auto from the bus stand. Hassan, the nearest railhead, is 37 km from Belur.
Work out your return before you settle in for the sunset. Public transport here thins out sharply in the evening, and Yagachi Dam is easier to reach than to leave. We do not publish departure times: there is no official live feed we are permitted to republish, and a wrong time here would strand you. Check the operator directly on the day.
Ask at the bus stand for the time of the last service back, not the next one. If you miss it, an auto or app cab is the fallback — agree the fare before you get in.
We have not assessed physical access at this place yet. Across India, step-free routes, handrails and accessible toilets are the exception rather than the rule, and pavements are often interrupted — if step-free access matters to you, contact the site or a local operator before committing to the trip.
Emergency numbers are verified against official government and state tourism sources. 112 works anywhere in India.

Walking and driving times are real routed distances, except the few marked “straight line”, which are direct-line estimates and will read short. Routing: © openrouteservice.org by HeiGIT | Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
October to February; late afternoon for the light. The reservoir is fullest just after the monsoon.
Entry: Water-sport charges on site. Timings: Daylight; activities weather- and level-dependent.
3.5 km from the Chennakeshava temple at Belur on the Chikkamagaluru road, and 37 km from Hassan; best reached by your own vehicle or a taxi. Water-sport charges are collected on site; confirm timings and whether activities are running, as they depend on the water level and weather.
1 to 1.5 hours.
Nearby you can pair Hoysaleswara Temple (21.0 km), Lakshmi Devi Temple, Doddagaddavalli (21.2 km), Jain Basadis, Halebidu (22.4 km), Chennakeshava Temple, Belur (35.0 km).
This is a working irrigation reservoir, not a lake laid out for swimming. Do not swim off the bund or the bank — the bed shelves away and the level is managed, not natural. Water sports are run by operators and are seasonal. Wear the life jacket you are given, follow the briefing, and do not go out if the operator says the level or the wind is wrong. The bund and the approach are exposed with no shade; between March and May bring water and a hat. Nothing here is floodlit. Sunset is the reason most people come, and the drive back to Belur is 3.5 km of unlit road — leave with light in hand. Keep children away from the edge on the bund. There is no continuous railing and no lifeguard.
We have not published a story about Yagachi Dam itself yet. These cover Belur, the town it sits in, and the wider district.
Yagachi Dam sits in Belur, so these cover the streets, buildings and surroundings around it.
Written about Belur as a whole rather than about Yagachi Dam — its history, its streets, and how to spend a day in it.
Route-level itineraries and practical guides for the rest of Karnataka.
Photographs: Ssriram mt, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0). Wikimedia Commons.