Sidarabetta
Siddarabetta is a granite hill of boulder caves, with a shrine to Siddalingeshwara set inside the rock and the dry-stone walls of a ruined fort on its summit. The name means "hill of the Siddhas": local tradition holds that ascetic healers meditated in its caves, and the hill is still known for the medicinal plants on its slopes. The route starts as a stairway used by pilgrims, and the steps give way to bare rock fitted with railings, then a stretch of loose stones. Near the top the path reaches the cave system around the shrine. The passages are narrow, dark and branch in several directions, and it is easy to lose your bearings inside without a torch. Above the caves the hill flattens into a grassland summit scattered with lichen-stained boulders. Crumbling stone ramparts cross it, and some walls are still pierced with loopholes. Open granite slabs on the summit's edge slope steeply down to the farmland below.
