Chincholi Wildlife Sanctuary

It is the first dry-land wildlife sanctuary in South India. Almost every other reserve in the state protects the wet, green forest of the Western Ghats; this one protects dry and moist deciduous woodland on the Deccan, which is a habitat type that had been almost entirely passed over. Karnataka notified it in 2011 as its twenty-first sanctuary.

14,958 hectares were notified in 2011, and the area is usually printed as 134.88 sq km. The OpenStreetMap boundary as drawn encloses 130.15 sq km. A small gap between a notified figure and a mapped polygon is ordinary.

Yes, but only recently. For thirteen years after notification there was no visitor route at all. A marked forest trek from Chandrampalli opened in late 2024 — described at its launch as South India’s first deciduous-forest trek — and in March 2026 a jungle safari, boating on the Chandrampalli reservoir and tented accommodation were added. It is lightly staffed and very new, so confirm current arrangements before travelling rather than relying on anything written earlier, this page included.

Yes, and the record is recent and specific. A camera-trap survey run between 16 October and 20 November 2023 — 104 traps, 1,650 trap days, by the Holématthi Nature Foundation and the Nature Conservation Foundation — produced twenty dhole photographs at nine locations. It was the first documented record of the species in the Kalyana-Karnataka region since the Mysore State Gazetteer for Gulbarga district in 1966. Published as Gubbi, Prabhu, Komarla and Suthar, Canid Biology & Conservation 27(6):34–38, 2024. Your chance of seeing one on a visit is very low.

The same 1,650 trap days recorded exactly one leopard. Golden jackal was the common canid at 83 independent events, with twelve each for the dhole and the Bengal fox. The prey base is blackbuck, four-horned antelope, nilgai, chital, wild pig, langur and porcupine. The paper’s own conclusion is that the leopard and the dhole are both at a bottleneck and could go locally extinct without deliberate conservation.

No. Gaur is a Western Ghats animal and does not occur in this dry Deccan country. Lists carrying it have been copied from elsewhere rather than counted here.

Nobody has settled it. The official Karnataka Tourism listing says "over 35 species"; a Kannada newspaper account puts it past 160. One photographer’s Wikimedia Commons uploads from a handful of 2020 visits alone cover more than thirty species, which suggests the low figure is far too low. Treat any single number you read as unverified.

Further than most writing says. The figure of roughly 60 km that is usually quoted was measured as the straight line, not along the road. By road the trek start is 87 km from the Kalaburagi bus station and Chincholi town is 78 km, both measured on the road network. Official Karnataka Tourism gives 100 km from Kalaburagi and 609 km from Bengaluru; treat the difference as a matter of which end of a large sanctuary is being measured to. Bidar at 57 km and Humnabad at 55 km are both closer than Kalaburagi, and Hyderabad is about 153 km.

Tandur, about 31 km away, is the nearest railhead.

October to February, when the heat has gone and the water is still holding. Early morning is the only serious time for wildlife, which is why the trek starts at first light. Avoid March to May: the dry country here becomes genuinely punishing rather than merely hot.

Yes. Lambani tandas — hamlets of a scheduled tribal community — sit inside the boundary. Since January 2025 the forest department has been trying to persuade one of them, Sheribikanahalli, to relocate to Venkatapur 13 km away; reports give 98 families and 219 people and a package of either ₹15 lakh or two acres of land plus ₹10 lakh. No completion has been reported. If you pass a tanda, treat it as somebody’s home.

There is one, written variously as Ettipotha or Ethipothala, in the Gottamgotta area, and there is the Kunchavaram forest block east of the town. Neither is on the marked trail and neither should be attempted without the forest department.

Yes — the Chandrampalli Nature Trail, opened to the public in early November 2024 and described at its launch by the state minister Priyank Kharge as South India’s first deciduous-forest trek. There are two routes: a long one of about 9 km from Chandrampalli to Gottamgotta, and a short one of about 4 km around Chandrampalli. A forest guard accompanies trekking parties.

Entry runs from about 6 am to 2 pm, and the usual advice is to report at the trek start between 6:00 and 6:30 am. That is not only a formality — early morning is the only serious window for wildlife here, and the heat later in the day is the reason the gate shuts at two.

Entry is by booked permit through the forest department’s Aranya Vihaara portal (aranyavihaara.karnataka.gov.in). There is no official published tariff we can find; a Kannada press account of the trek reports ₹200 an adult for the long route and ₹100 for the short one, half price for ages 12 to 18 and free under 12. Treat those as reported rather than official. One caution: checked on 24 August 2026, the Aranya Vihaara front page was not listing Chincholi or Chandrampalli among its treks, so do not assume a slot will simply be bookable online — contact the Chincholi range office as well. Private operators also sell packaged Chincholi forest treks out of Bengaluru, which is a different transaction from a forest-department permit.

It starts at Chandrampalli, about 10 km north of Chincholi town, by the Chandrampalli dam — which is built across the Mullamari, one of the main tributaries of the Bhima. The long route ends at Gottamgotta, which is also the area the local waterfall is in. The short route stays around the dam.

By a long way, and this catches people out. It is roughly 140 km from Hyderabad, about three and a half hours, against 609 km from Bengaluru by the official Karnataka Tourism figure. The forest is nonetheless Karnataka Forest Department land, so the rules, the permits and the range office are Karnataka’s, not Telangana’s.

Because the photographer labelled them that way. The images most often used for Chincholi are by one Hyderabad birder, and several carry "Telangana" on Wikimedia Commons. That is his error rather than a different place: the sanctuary is in Karnataka, and Commons has since filed the set under Kalaburagi district. Some of those birds were also photographed in the millet fields at the forest edge rather than inside the boundary.

October to February, when the heat has gone and the water is still holding. Early morning is the only serious time for wildlife — the trek starts at first light for that reason. Avoid March to May, when the dry country here becomes genuinely punishing.

Entry: Booked permit only, through the forest department’s Aranya Vihaara portal — no published official tariff; a Kannada press account of the trek reports ₹200 an adult for the long route and ₹100 for the short one, half for ages 12–18 and free under 12. Timings: Report at the Chandrampalli trek start between 6.00 and 6.30 am; reported entry closes around 2 pm.

The way in is Chandrampalli, on the far side of Chincholi town — about 10 km beyond it by road, roughly 12 minutes. Chincholi itself is 78 km from Kalaburagi and the trek start about 87 km, which is around an hour and a half of driving. The old “about 60 km” figure that stood here was the straight line, not the road. Coming from the other direction is often quicker. Bidar is 57 km from the dam, Humnabad 55 km, and Hyderabad about 153 km — the sanctuary sits on the state border, and a great many of its visitors are Hyderabad birders. The nearest useful railhead is Tandur, 31 km from Chincholi town across the border in Telangana. Bidar is 62 km and Kalaburagi Junction 77 km. Kannada Wikipedia gives Tandur and Sedam as the two nearest stations at about 30 km, which matches. Nearest airports: Kalaburagi 65 km, Hyderabad 163 km. The trek must be booked in advance through the forest department’s Aranya Vihaara portal (aranyavihaara.karnataka.gov.in), listed under Kalaburagi district as the Chandrampalli Nature Trail. Reports put the daily cap at 100 trekkers and ask you to report at the start between 6.00 and 6.30 am, with entry closing around 2 pm. A forest guard walks with every group — this is not a trail you are allowed to wander alone, and that is also the only reason you have any chance of seeing anything. Buses run from Kalaburagi and Bidar to Chincholi town, where there are budget hotels; from the town onward to Chandrampalli you will want your own vehicle or an auto.

Half a day for the short trail and the dam; a full day, starting before dawn, for the long walk to Gottamgotta and back.

Nearby you can pair Chandrampalli Dam (160 m), Malkhed (Manyakheta) (49.4 km), Bennethora Dam (50.0 km), Buddha Vihar (65.4 km).

You cannot simply turn up and walk in. Entry is by booked permit with a forest guard, and going in unaccompanied is both illegal and a good way to get lost in 135 sq km of look-alike scrub. This is dry-country heat, not hill weather. Carry all your own water — there is nothing to buy past Chincholi town — and start at first light or not at all. The sanctuary holds leopard, sloth bear and striped hyena, though all of them in very small numbers — a 2023 camera-trap survey caught a single leopard in 1,650 trap days. None of that is a reason to stay away, and all of it is a reason to keep behind your guard, make noise on blind corners, and never walk at dusk. Ground cover is thorn scrub over loose rock. Wear boots you can walk 9 km in, watch your footing on the dam bund, and expect snakes in the warm months. Phone signal is patchy inside the forest. The nearest hospital is at Chincholi town, about 10 km from the trek start; anything serious means Kalaburagi, an hour and a half away.