Agasthiyar Falls

Agasthiyar Falls in the Western Ghats mountain range of southern India. Agasthiyar temple adjoining the falls named Agasthiyar falls is located half way to Panatheertham, which is at a distance of 4-km from Papanasam Shiva temple. A temple dedicated to the sage Agasthiyar clings to the rocky mountain above the Falls. Legend has it that when Shiva married Parvati, he was worried that the influx of people from the South attending the wedding in the North would cause the North to sink, so he dispatched Agasthiyar to the South (to this waterfall, naturally) in order to balance the world. To commemorate the visit of the divine couple, The Agasthya temple was built there This is located half way to the Panatheertham which is at a distance of 4 km from Papanasam Siva Temple. One can reach these Agasthiyar Falls and temple by trekking a distance of 3 km.

The waters that supply the Falls flow through forests filled with medicinal herbs, past Agasthiyars pure abode, and feed the verdant fields below, contributing to the belief that the waters at Agasthiyar Falls have healing powers. Of course theres also a strong recreational component to the Falls popularity: its fun and cooling to be pummelled by the force of the waters 100-metre drop." Richard Rapfogel recently traded a 25-year career as a psychologist for the full-time pursuit of his 40-year passion for photography. He describes his work as a means of engaging with, more fully experiencing and better understanding the layering of meaning which resides below the surface of life. Richards photographs are quite varied in subject matter, ranging from images of people in India and elsewhere, to graffiti-laden walls, to studies of a single forested acre in North Carolina, but they share a common artistic impulse: to participate in life by looking, to allow oneself to be touched and influenced by what one sees, to articulate that experience and, hopefully, to illuminate it.