Which one of the following is correctly matched? Painted Rock Shelters Site — District
- (a)Kalamati – Champawat
- (b)Kimingram – Uttarkashi
- (c)Farkanauli – Chamoli
- (d)Malla Painali – Almora
Correct — D, Malla Painali – Almora.
The prehistoric painted rock shelters reported from Kumaon cluster in the hills immediately around Almora town, and Malla Painali – Almora is the pairing that survives that test.
They are strung along the eastern side of the Kalamati–Dinapani ridge, spread over a radius of roughly 15 km in the upper Suyal river country. Malla Painali belongs to exactly this group.
The idea to carry away is to learn these shelters by district: Almora holds the Kumaon cluster, while on the Garhwal side they sit in Chamoli and in Uttarkashi. Then a shuffled pair becomes a lookup rather than a guess.
- (a)Kalamati – Champawat — Kalamati is a genuine painted rock shelter site, but it lies in Almora, not Champawat. The pair that holds is Kalamati – Almora.
Kalamati also names the ridge — the Kalamati–Dinapani range — along whose eastern flank the Almora shelters are spread. The word is tied to that one district twice over, as a site and as a landform.
- (b)Kimingram – Uttarkashi — The shelter site of this name is Kimni village, written variously as Kimni gram or Kimani, and it lies in the Pindar valley in Chamoli district. The pair that holds is Kimni – Chamoli.
Uttarkashi does carry rock art of its own: Hudli, in the Yamuna valley, whose paintings are done in a blue pigment. The district here is real — it is the site that has been moved off it.
- (c)Farkanauli – Chamoli — Farkanauli is a painted rock shelter in Almora, in the same upper-Suyal group as the keyed site, so the pair that holds is Farkanauli – Almora.
Chamoli is a real rock-art district, which is why the option is tempting. Its recorded shelters include Gwarkhya Udyar (near Dungri) and Kimni village in the Pindar valley, while Farkanauli sits in the Almora list.
A rock shelter — शैलाश्रय, and udyar (उड्यार) in Kumaoni — is an overhang or shallow hollow in a rock face that gave prehistoric people cover. Several Uttarakhand site names carry the word outright, as in Lakhu Udyar and Gwarkhya Udyar.
When the walls of such a shelter carry pigment figures of people, animals and hands, it is called a painted rock shelter. These are the earliest cultural evidence the state has, older than any dynasty in its recorded history.
Uttarakhand's history begins with this prehistoric layer and only then moves to the Kunindas, Katyuris and Chands, so the shelters sit at the head of the state's story rather than as a footnote to it.
They also connect the hills to the wider Indian rock-art record that Bhimbetka anchors — the same class of evidence, read at a smaller scale and with a district-level geography attached.
- Lakhu Udyar, on the right bank of the Suyal near Barechhina on the Almora–Pithoragarh road, was the first painted rock shelter reported in Uttarakhand, in 1968.
- The Lakhu Udyar find is credited to Dr. M. P. Joshi.
- Almora district's painted shelters include Lakhu Udyar, Petshal, Falseema, Lwethap, Farkanauli, Kalamati and Malla Painali.
- Rock shelters on the Kasar Devi hill, north of Almora town, also form part of the district's shelter record.
- Chamoli's recorded shelters include Gwarkhya Udyar near Dungri village, further shelters at Dungri itself, Kimni village in the Pindar valley, and Malari gaon.
- Hudli, in the Yamuna valley in Uttarkashi district, carries paintings done in a blue pigment.
- The Almora shelters are concentrated within a radius of roughly 15 km on the eastern side of the Kalamati–Dinapani ridge.
- The human and animal figures at Kimni are painted in a pale white pigment.
- Udyar is the Kumaoni word for a rock shelter, which is why it recurs inside site names.
Three of the four names printed in the question are Almora sites; the fourth, Kimni, belongs to Chamoli. Of the four pairs as printed, only Malla Painali – Almora is matched correctly.
- Kalamati names both a shelter site and the Almora ridge the cluster runs along, so reading the word as a hint towards some other district throws the pair away.
- Chamoli genuinely holds painted shelters and so does Uttarkashi, so seeing a Garhwal district beside a site name is not by itself evidence that the pair is correct.
- Several Almora names carry no udyar in them — Petshal, Falseema, Lwethap, Farkanauli, Kalamati and Malla Painali among them — so the absence of the word says nothing about which district a site sits in.
- Spellings drift in transliteration: Kimni village appears as Kimni gram, Kimani or Kimingram, and an unfamiliar spelling can make a known site look like a new one.
- Knowing what the paintings show settles nothing here; the discriminating fact in a match like this is purely the district.
What this knowledge settles is a district lookup: given a shelter name you can place it in its district, and given a district you can name shelters recorded there.
It also carries the single facts attached to the cluster — the river Lakhu Udyar stands on, the year the first Uttarakhand shelter was reported, and the scholar credited with that find.
The deciding knowledge in a site-to-district pairing is the district map itself, rather than anything about the pigments or the figures.
UPSC_2024_GS1_Q552024Same device — an archaeological site set against the place it belongs to, decided by geography rather than by anything about the remains. It differs in scale and content: that item pairs sites with States across India and adds a description column, while this one pairs Uttarakhand shelters with districts inside one State.
UPSC_2022_GS1_Q912022Same matching format — a heritage site tested against the State it stands in, where the wrong pairs are made by shifting a real site to a neighbouring administrative unit. It differs in period and subject: Ashokan major rock edicts of the historical era, and it asks how many pairs match rather than which single pair does.
CDS_GK_2024_II_Q562024Same subject — prehistoric rock art and the shelters that carry it. What differs is the demand: that item tests the discovery story of Bhimbetka at the national level, whereas this one tests where individual Uttarakhand shelters sit on the district map.
MPPSC_2025_PRE_PaperI_Q942025Same category of site — painted rock shelters — approached through the discovery fact, which is the companion to Lakhu Udyar's 1968 report here. It differs in that it asks for a discovery year at Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh, not a site-to-district pairing in Uttarakhand.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The painted rock shelter of Lakhu Udyar is situated on the bank of which river?
- (a)Kosi
- (b)Suyal
- (c)Ramganga
- (d)Pindar
Answerb — Suyal. Lakhu Udyar stands on the right bank of the Suyal near Barechhina, and the Almora cluster of shelters lies in this upper Suyal country.Kosi and Ramganga are Kumaon rivers, but the shelter is recorded on the Suyal. Pindar is the Garhwal valley that carries Kimni, in Chamoli district, not Lakhu Udyar.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following painted rock shelter sites lies in Chamoli district?
- (a)Petshal
- (b)Falseema
- (c)Gwarkhya Udyar
- (d)Kalamati
Answerc — Gwarkhya Udyar, recorded in Chamoli near Dungri village, along with Kimni in the Pindar valley and Malari gaon.Petshal, Falseema and Kalamati all belong to the Almora cluster on the Kalamati–Dinapani ridge, so each of them is an Almora entry rather than a Chamoli one.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Malla Painali, Farkanauli and Kalamati — the painted rock shelters at these three places lie in which district of Uttarakhand?
- (a)Champawat
- (b)Uttarkashi
- (c)Chamoli
- (d)Almora
Answerd — Almora. All three are recorded in Almora district, within a radius of roughly 15 km east of Almora town along the Kalamati–Dinapani ridge.Chamoli carries Gwarkhya Udyar, Dungri, Kimni and Malari, and Uttarkashi carries Hudli. The three sites named in the stem, though, sit in Almora, so Champawat does not hold them either.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The first prehistoric painted rock shelter reported in Uttarakhand, in 1968, was at:
- (a)Petshal
- (b)Gwarkhya Udyar
- (c)Lakhu Udyar
- (d)Kimni
Answerc — Lakhu Udyar, on the right bank of the Suyal river in Almora district, the find credited to Dr. M. P. Joshi.Petshal is part of the same Almora cluster but is not the site of that first report. Gwarkhya Udyar and Kimni are Chamoli shelters, on the Garhwal side of the map.