Bhagawan Nityananda arrived in this area early in the twentieth century and spent something in the order of twenty-five years here before moving on to Maharashtra. What he left behind is a hillside of caves — chambers hewn out of a single body of laterite, dark and cool, made for long meditation.
How many
Sources disagree, and the disagreement is worth stating rather than resolving by choosing the roundest number. **Forty-three, forty-four and forty-five all appear in print**, and forty-five is sometimes given a symbolic reading.
- The ashram’s OWN account says forty-three, carved by hand out of a single mass of laterite, with a temple built above them in 1963.
- Several tourism sources say forty-five. Two of our own records used to say forty-five as well, and we corrected them.
- We follow the ashram. Where an institution counts the thing it owns, that count outranks a tourism listing.
Cut, not commissioned
The tradition is emphatic on this point: he spent long days working the rock himself, opening chamber after chamber in the laterite so that others could sit in the dark and meditate. He was a wandering yogi, lived in remote forest, and was known for severe austerities — the accounts describe him lying on a great rock in deep samadhi under the hot sun.
A hillside of hand-cut cells is an unusual kind of relic, because **it is simultaneously a spiritual claim and a physical fact you can walk into and touch**. Whatever a visitor believes about the man, the caves are indisputably there and somebody made them. Laterite holds its cool even at the height of the coastal heat, which is exactly the property that makes a chamber cut into it useful for sitting still in for hours.
Before the caves: Guruvanam
About five kilometres away is **Guruvanam** — a rocky hillock in some forty acres of forest, where he is said to have meditated first, and where a stream of water is held by tradition to have appeared through his meditation and to be holy. It is the oldest kind of story attached to a place — a saint arrives, water comes — told here about a man who died in 1961.
What else is on the site
The cave ashram has grown into a full complex around the rock. There is a temple said to be modelled on **Somnath in Gujarat** — an unusual reference point for a Kerala shrine, and a reminder that this foundation always faced outward, towards a pan-Indian devotional world rather than a local one — and a life-size seated figure of Nityananda cast in **panchaloha**, the five-metal alloy used for temple bronzes.
The caves themselves remain the reason to come. Both ashrams at Kanhangad are open to visitors without charge, and they are places of practice rather than sights: dress modestly, keep quiet, leave the phone out of the caves and ask before photographing anyone.
Frequently asked questions
How many caves are there at Kanhangad?
The ashram’s own account says forty-three, cut by hand from a single mass of laterite, with a temple built above them in 1963. Forty-four and forty-five also appear in print, and several tourism sources give forty-five. We follow the ashram.
Who cut the caves?
The tradition holds that Bhagawan Nityananda cut them himself over long days of work, opening chamber after chamber in the laterite so others could meditate in them.
What is Guruvanam?
A rocky hillock in about forty acres of forest roughly five kilometres away, where Nityananda is said to have meditated first, and where a stream held by tradition to have appeared through his meditation is treated as holy.
What is there to see at the cave ashram besides the caves?
A temple said to be modelled on Somnath in Gujarat, and a life-size seated figure of Nityananda cast in panchaloha.