THE CAUVERY RIVER
The Cauvery [Kaveri] River is one of the sacred rivers of India and from it's origin in the Coorg region to it's entrance into the Bay of Bengal it is steeped in Dravidian history. Although the upper reaches have continuous annual flow the mid and lower sections are damned and bled for irrigation water.
Geologically the Cauvery River is influenced by a major structural depression in the southern part of the Dharwar Dome Granulite Belt. The Cauvery River drainage basin originates in the Brahmagiri Range of the Western Ghats, Karnataka at an elevation of some 1,340 m [Rao, 1975]. Geologically this is within the Dharwar [Karnataka] Craton, which is a Granite-Gneiss-Greenbelt massif. It is a small river some ~765 km. [475 miles] long and has a drainage area of ~72,000 sq. km. The climate of the basin is perhumid in the northwest, through humid, moist humid, dry subhumid to semi-arid climatic zones.
From it's headwaters the river flows eastwards down the eastern Ghats as a series of waterfalls.
The Cauvery River has a moderate sized delta that commences at Trichinopoly. From its source the river flows eastwards to join the Bay of Bengal through five distributaries in Tamil Nadu. The apex of the Cauvery Delta is about 30 km west of Thanjavur and the area of the deltaic plain is often called the garden of southern India.
The Coromandal coast is a region steeped in Dravidian culture.
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