Ramana Maharshi · The caves

Virupaksha Cave & Skandashram

A short, steep, rewarding walk up the slopes of Arunachala to the two caves where the young Ramana lived for over twenty years ~ with the finest views over the temple in town.

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Above Sri Ramanasramam, a stone path climbs the lower slopes of Arunachala to two of the most atmospheric places in Tiruvannamalai: the caves where the young Ramana Maharshi lived for more than twenty years, absorbed in silence, before the ashram below ever existed. The walk up is short but steep, the views over the great temple are magnificent, and the caves themselves hold a stillness that many visitors find is the quiet high point of their whole stay.

Virupaksha Cave

The first and lower of the two is Virupaksha Cave, named after a thirteenth-century saint whose samadhi it contains, and shaped ~ so it is often said ~ like the sacred syllable Om. Ramana lived here for some seventeen years, from around 1899 to 1916, and of all the places on the hill, this cave holds the deepest imprint of his silent years.

It is worth pausing on what those years actually were. When Ramana first settled here he was still barely more than a boy, and still almost wholly absorbed in the Self ~ speaking little, indifferent to the body, tended by the devoted Palaniswami who begged food for them both. And yet it was precisely in this cave, during these years, that the silent youth slowly became a teacher. Seekers climbed the hill and found him; they sat; they were changed; and some never left. It was here that Sivaprakasam Pillai put the questions that became Who Am I? ~ so that the seed-text of the whole teaching was, in a sense, born in this dim cool room in the rock. To sit in Virupaksha now is to sit where the teaching first found words.

The cave itself is small, cool, and dark, with a natural rock formation and the quiet of deep stone. Pilgrims do sit here ~ often in silence, sometimes for a long while, and many report a palpable stillness, a settledness, that is hard to explain and easy to feel. The climb from the ashram area takes roughly twenty to thirty minutes at an unhurried pace. There is often someone present who keeps the cave; a small lamp burns; you remove your shoes and go in, and sit, and that is all there is to do, and it is enough.

Skandashram

A little higher, about fifteen minutes further up, is Skandashram, where Ramana moved around 1916 and lived until 1922. If Virupaksha is the cave of the silent years, Skandashram is the place where a home began to form around him. It is greener and more open than Virupaksha ~ there is a natural spring that still flows, trees for shade, a small garden tended over the decades ~ and the view from its terrace, out over the nine gopurams of the Arunachaleswarar temple and the wide plain beyond, is quite simply one of the finest and most peaceful sights in all of Tiruvannamalai. Many visitors find they cannot leave the terrace for a long while.

It was here that the human warmth of the later ashram first gathered. Ramana's mother Alagammal and his brother came and stayed; his mother spent her last years at Skandashram, cooking for the small community, deepening from a grieving parent into a devotee, and it was here, in 1922, that Ramana guided her to liberation at her death. That event changed everything: after his mother was buried at the foot of the hill, Ramana came down to be near her samadhi, and never lived on the upper slopes again. The community that became Sri Ramanasramam grew up around her shrine. So Skandashram is, in a real sense, the last home of the hermit and the threshold of the ashram ~ the hinge on which Ramana's outer life turned from solitude on the mountain to the great gathering below.

What it is like to be there

Guidebooks will tell you these are “caves where Ramana lived,” and leave it at that, as though they were exhibits. They are not exhibits. They are living places of the deepest quiet, and the experience of visiting them is, for many people, the unexpected heart of their whole time at Arunachala. There is the climb itself ~ the town falling away below you, the great temple slowly revealing its full vast plan as you rise, the air thinning and cooling. There is the moment of stepping out of the sun into the cool dark of Virupaksha, and the way conversation naturally dies. And there is the sitting ~ the simple, unhurried sitting in a place where a human being once sat so still, and so deep, for so many years, that something of it seems to have soaked permanently into the rock.

You do not need to believe anything for this to work on you. Sceptics and devotees alike come down from the caves quieter than they went up. Bring water, bring time, and bring, if you can, no agenda at all. Sit in each cave for as long as feels right. Watch the light on the plain from the Skandashram terrace. The hill gives these hours freely, and many carry them home as the truest souvenir of Arunachala.

Making the walk

The path begins near Sri Ramanasramam and is well trodden and easy to follow; you'll rarely be the only one making the climb. Take it slowly ~ this is not a summit attempt but a short pilgrimage to two rooms on a hillside where something quiet and enormous once happened, and still, many feel, lingers. Sit in each for as long as you like. There is no fee, no ceremony required, nothing you must do. The caves ask only for quiet.

Last updated 12 September 2026. Details can change; please confirm current information where relevant.