In the holy month of Shravan, the cave is visited by devotees who walk to the shrine bare-footed with decorated bamboo palanquins called "Kanwadiya" and bathe in the maha kund before worshipping Lord Gupteshwar.

[2] Surrounded by a dense forest of sal trees and flanked by the Kolab river, a 2 metres (6.6 ft) high lingam stands in the cave.

People worship it as the udder of God Kamadhenu (the divine cow) and wait under it with outstretched palms to collect drops of water which fall only at long intervals.

According to tradition, the lingam was first discovered by Lord Rama when he was roaming in the Dandakaranya forest with wife Sita and brother Lakshman, and named the deity in the cave as "Gupteshwar".

However, as the time passed, the temple was again lost in obscurity but in the 17th century, the Shiva lingam was discovered by a hunter who then informed about it to Maharajah Veer Vikram Dev, who was the king of that region and recently shifted his capital from Nandapur to the newly formed, Jeypore.