Kiriburu Meghahatuburu - Unexplored Jharkhand-Odisha Travel Guide

Looking for some explored place in India to go during your vacation?

You can plan Kiriburu travel. It can include a trip to Kiriburu Meghahatuburu and also quench your thirst for adventure with some amazing Kiriburu Meghahatuburu adventure.

Although there are so many tourist places in India, there are only a few places in India to visit during monsoon. However, there are places whose beauty is augmented by incessant rainfall and flowing clouds of monsoon. Kiriburu and Meghahatuburu on the borders of Indian states of Odisha and Jharkhand are such towns, which have remained mostly unexplored by the tourists.

In the local dialect, the term Kiri means Elephant, Megha means Cloud, and Buru means Forest. So, Kiriburu is a a Forest of Elephants and Meghahatuburu is a Forest of Clouds. And undoubtedly, these two places live up to their names.

The Howrah Barbil Janshatabdi Express departs from Howrah Junction at 6:20 AM. So, we boarded the air-conditioned chair car compartment of the train pretty early on a monsoon morning. Our destination - Barbil, the terminal station.

The train reached Barbil station at 1:55 PM. The tour operator, who had arranged a Barbil Station-to-Baril Station trip, had already sent a car. All we needed to pay was INR 5000 per person for the whole trip, which included boarding, travel by a car, and the meals as well. We boarded the car from just outside the Barbil Station to start our Kiriburu-Meghahatuburu trip.

Kiriburu and Meghahatuburu are two mining towns located on the borders of the Indian states of Odisha and Jharkhand. A couple of big iron ore mines, which are governed by the Steel Authority of India (SAIL), are located in Kiriburu Meghahatuburu. However, that does not make these towns the center of scintillating activities. Instead, they seem to be the perfect place to spend some quality time in the lap of nature, amidst the forests and hills, and in absolute silence and solitude. 

The train was a bit late, and we reached Barbil Station at around 2 PM. A car, which would be our traveling option for the whole trip, was waiting just outside the station. It took us about 45 minutes of drive through the undulating, red muddy road to reach the Kiriburu Hilltop Guest House. We had our rooms booked in this guest house located at the top of the hill. This accommodation, owned and maintained by SAIL, is quite modest, but is also well managed.

If you’re looking for a really luxurious stay, then Kiriburu is not for you. The one-storied Kiriburu Hilltop Guest House offers the most modest accommodation. As you enter the building, there’s a long verandah that runs from one end of the building to the other. Along this verandah are a few rooms and a kitchen-cum-dining hall. The room that we had booked seemed to be quite modest. It had a bed, a couple of chairs, a small table, and an almirah. There was an attached washroom with basic toiletries.

The First Day at Kiriburu

After reaching Kiriburu Hilltop Guest House, we freshened up and had our quick lunch. The dining hall at the Kiriburu Hilltop Guest House is a large one. The lunch was a delicious one with rice, dal, a vegetable curry, salad, and fish curry. Once the lunch was over, we got into the car and headed toward the Bolani Ores Mines. 

If you're fond of photography, you can go to quite a few Meghahatuburu photography spots to get the best clicks. Most of the Kiriburu sightseeing spots and Meghahatuburu attractions we visited offered excellent sceneries that can be clicked and kept as amazing photographs.

Bolani Ores Mines

To enter the Bolani Ores Mines, you need to get a permission from Kiriburu. The office of the mines is located just beside the Kiriburu Hilltop Guest House. However, as we didn't have the time to get the permission done, we decided to have a look at the mine from outside. And that was amazing enough too to leave us mesmerized.

What's the color of the soil that you're accustomed to seeing?

The soil in and around the Bolani Ores Mines is completely reddish in color. That's because of the high amount of iron ore, which is present in the soil. We could see the mine from which the ores are extracted. In fact, the large trucks, which were carrying the fresh ores out of the iron mine seemed like giants coming out of underground caves.

Due to the presence of the iron ore mines, the iron content of the soil is so high that it even turned the rain water red. In fact, the color of the waters of the rivers around the place are also red.

The advancing clouds over the mines and the red soil rich in iron ore below them formed an amazing view.

From the Bolani Mines, we headed toward the Kiriburu Sunset View Point near Meghahatuburu.

The Kiriburu Sunset View Point

The Sunset View Point is surely one of the major attractions of Kiriburu Meghahatuburu.

After getting down from the car, we walked a little uphill through the overgrown shrubs to reach the Kiriburu Sunset View Point. The Sunset View Point, Kiriburu, is properly constructed. It has the railings at the border of the gorge. Take a look and you can see the clouds roaming around there just as cattle grazing in a field.

After witnessing the amazing sunset, we went to the main marketplace of Kiriburu. Don't expect something lavish there. It's as small and unassuming as the town itself. However, the coffee that we had at a restaurant there was amazing and perfect to give us some warmth in that ambiance. Besides, the rains, the fog, the clouds, the light, and the darkness had created a mesmerizing and magical atmosphere at that seemingly mundane place.

After a while, we started for our Guest House. The roads were pitch dark and the headlight of the car illuminated just the area where it fell. We returned to the Guest House, had our dinner, and retired for the day.

The Second Day

We started early the next day, going to the local forest called Kundul. Staying in the cities, we hardly get a chance to come so close to nature. There's, of course, no proper road inside the forest. The one that goes in between the lines of trees is made from red soil and gravel.

We parked our car inside the forest and walked around to get a view of the surroundings. We could hear the sounds of the birds, barring which the forest was absolutely quiet.

After spending some time in the Kundul Forest, we headed toward a popular waterfall - the Jhinkra waterfall.

Jhinkra Waterfall

The road to the Jhinkra Waterfall looks great! It goes through the forests and in between vast fields. And if you look closely, you might find a few huts with thatched roofs here and there on those fields. We even crossed a river, the waters of which are completely red due to the iron ore content of the soil.

After a while, the road isn't that great. That's because we had entered a dense forest. So, we got down from our car and started walking. Our driver became our guide. He took us through narrow roads with forests on both sides. Soon those roads disappeared and we started walking through a field. And as that field ended, we started walking up a mountain. From far away, we could see the waterfall as a small threat flowing down the body of the mountain. We stepped on boulders and crossed a few streams and rivulets. 

This little trek seemed to make sense when we reached the spot just below the waterfall. The view was amazing! 

The water was flowing down from quite a height and flowed down as a stream of red water. It sprinkled anyone who came close to the bottom of the cascade of waters.

The water, with a touch of sunrays, formed a magical rainbow right at the bottom of the waterfall.

Back to Kiriburu Hilltop Guest House

By the time we came down from the spot of the waterfall to our car, it had started raining heavily. We moved through drenched roads through the forests that bought a sense of adventure.

By the time we reached Kiriburu Hilltop Guesthouse, the surroundings were covered with dense cloud. The place seemed to live up to its name of Meghahatuburu.

The evening was almost without any form of light and extreme dark. And the little bit of light coming from some faraway place, together with the trees and the clouds, formed a magical ambiance at the Kiriburu Hilltop Guest House.

The Last Day

The next morning, we had a train to catch. And we had another destination on our list before we board the train - the Murga Mahadev Temple at Noamundi.

The Murga Mahadev Temple

We started early from Kiriburu, as we wanted to visit the Murga Mahadev Temple and Waterfall. It's a temple dedicated to Hindu God Shiva and gets its name from murga or hen, which are sacrificed here to appease the god. There's a twin waterfall just behind the temple.

From the Murga Mahadev Temple, which is located near Noamundi, we started for the station. We had our lunch at a restaurant near the station. Instead of going to the Barbil station, we went to the Bara Jamda Railway Station and boarded the train for Howrah from there, bringing an end to our short but amazing Kiriburu Meghahatuburu trip.