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 state tourism corporation's hotel on Temple Road, five minutes' walk from the Chennakeshava compound — which is the whole argument for it, because the temple is at its best in the first hour after it opens and the last before it closes, and staying here means you can do both. Fourteen rooms including a suite, air-conditioned and not, two dormitories, a restaurant and a bar. Hassan district's 2018 hotel list put it at ₹1,200 to ₹1,500; treat that as an indication. Book through KSTDC direct.
The state tourism corporation's own hotel, standing directly opposite the Yagachi dam about 3.5 km north of the temple on the Chikkamagaluru road. KSTDC runs it as a budget unit with a restaurant, and the point of it is the water: the rooms face the dam, and Belur, Halebidu, Hassan and the Chikkamagaluru coffee country are all inside an easy drive. Book through KSTDC rather than a travel agent — it is a government corporation and it sells its own rooms.
A twenty-room lodge on K.G. Road, 825 m and roughly ten minutes' walk from the temple gate, with parking inside its own compound and a restaurant on site. It is one of only four Belur properties that Hassan district's official hotel list carries; that list — compiled in 2018, so read the money as an indication and not a quote — put its rooms in the ₹400 to ₹1,500 band. Rooms are plain, air-conditioned and not.
A small lodge on the Belur Road side of town, 606 m from the temple gate — about seven minutes on foot, which puts it inside the walk-to-the-temple ring along with the two Mayura units and Sumukha. It does not appear on Hassan district's official hotel list and has no site of its own that we could verify, so ring ahead rather than arriving on the strength of this entry.
Book with the place itself. India’s cyber-crime coordination centre warned in April 2025 that convincing copies of hotel and pilgrimage booking sites are being pushed through sponsored search and social ads, taking payment for rooms the property never hears about. Every listing here links to the business’s own contact details and its own Google or Bing profile — we take no commission and sit in nobody’s payment path. If a booking page reached you through an ad, check the address bar against the property’s own site before you pay. Fraud can be reported on cybercrime.gov.in or on 1930.
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.