About the Place & what to see:

The cave painting sites in Western Orissa are can be reached from Bhubaneswar via car overnight to reach Sundergarh—sleek motorable road and 7 hours overnight journey. Or else, can make to the steel city Rourkela (luxury hotels available here) an access point, which is nearly 80 kilometers from Sundergarh, the district headquarter.Ushakothi, one of the most ancient cave painting sites tracing to Neolithic period, lies at nearly 40 kilometre distance from Sundergarh. The stretch between these two points is partly laid on gravel and tar and other part is a tortuous winding through forest.The entire zone is a tribal region and dominated by hills of Eastern ghat range.  It is difficult to ride on the bed of sedimentary rocks of unthinkable geometrical shapes.Some of the surrounding hills look like demon appearances raise to the heavens with their sledgehammers and may mislead you as Ushakothi hills. It is better to take your roadmap from a local adivasi or you may stray into the forest.  From distance, the rock formation of one of the Ushakothi hills was looks like a huge cottage raised on top of the hill. The rock paintings in Ushakothi are found in two hills separated from each other by a kilometer and a half distance. These natural caves are coloured with the help of a twig of a palm tree turned into a brush by hammering its fibrous end. There paintings are mostly linear and different from one cave to another. The paintings surfaces are opening facades of the cave.The scheme of composition of these paintings ranges from small geometrical and floral patterns to animal motifs like deer, cattle, stag and sambar. Some of the human figures are shown as hunting, domesticating, fighting and dancing. However, most of these paintings are difficult to decipher and mostly you imagine them close to human and animal forms after reading from the available edition of Orissa tourism monograms.The pigments used by the rock painters are oxide of iron which give the color red and brown; white is derived from lime and the color green from the copper compound. These colors are mostly available near the rock shelters. These paintings have been done by primitive men the ancestors of the tribals of central India and western Orissa.
The main Ushakothi hill is also a place for worshipping. Under the rock shelter there is a Shiv linga who is constantly watered and offered foods. The local adivasis take a tortuous journey to reach the God in large numbers during Shiv ratri, the Hindu festival dedicated to Lord Shiva. The tribals also decipher some of the rock shelter images as sketches of God.