The Biligirirangans are a forested hill range near Mysore, India. It is home to the Soligas who worship a massive Champak tree called Dodda Sampige.
The temple and town associated with Biligirirangaswamy forms the major hub of human activity here. The Jungle Lodges at Kyatadevaragudi (or K. Gudi) is an eco-tourism venture run by the Karnataka Forest deparment. The megafauna of the area includes gaur, elephant, sambar deer and chital deer, wild dog, leopard and tiger.
The book Going Back by Monica Jackson is a good introduction to the area written by the granddaughter of a Scottishcoffee planter who brought coffee to these hills and daughter of the Hunter naturalist Colonel Ralph C. Morris.
Smaller ranges, including the Nilgiri Hills (with Doddabetta being the highest peak at 2623 meters) of northwestern Tamil Nadu and Biligirirangans southeast of Mysore in Karnataka, meet the Shevaroys (Servarayan range) and Tirumala range farther east, linking the Western Ghats to the Eastern Ghats.
The evergreen forests of Nagarahole, Biligirirangan Hills, Male Madeshvara hills, deciduous forests of Bandipur National Park and Nugu in Karnataka and adjoining regions of Wayanad and Mudumalai in Kerala and Tamil Nadu form the single largest protected area in the Western ghats system comprising some 6000 km².
Biligirirangan hills sits at the confluence of the western and Eastern Ghats and is hence home to unique ecosystems present in both ranges.
Colonel Ralph Camroux Morris (1894-1977) was a British Army officer and hunter-naturalist who was born in India.
His father was a Scottish planter Randolph Hayton Morris who was the first to introduce coffee in the Biligirirangans.
After retiring from the army he returned to his coffee estate Attikan in the highest peak of the Biligirirangan hills, Honnametti, near Mysore in southern India.
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