Great Rann of Kutch
Interesting facts
- The word Rann comes from the Sanskrit iriṇa, meaning salt flat or barren ground, a term already found in the Rigveda and the Mahabharata.
- The Rann is thought to have been a navigable lake as recently as the time of Alexander the Great, before uplift sealed it off from the sea.
- The Ghaggar River once emptied into the Rann, and traces of its old delta channels were mapped by the Geological Survey of India in 2000.
- A great earthquake in 1819 shifted a branch of the Indus delta and cut the Rann off from the river's water.
- Summer temperatures here have peaked at about 49.5 °C, yet winter nights can drop below freezing.
- During the monsoon floods the Indian wild ass takes refuge on patches of higher ground known locally as bets.
- In very wet years the flooded marsh can stretch all the way from the Gulf of Kutch to the Gulf of Khambhat.
- Local people describe mysterious dancing lights over the marsh at night, known as Chir Batti, or ghost lights, which remain unexplained.
- After clashes over the Rann in 1965, an international tribunal ruled in 1968, awarding about 90 percent of the disputed territory to India.
- Salman Rushdie set scenes of Midnight's Children in the Rann, and films including Lagaan and Refugee were shot here.
Why it is worth it
For most of the year the Great Rann of Kutch is one of the emptiest places in India: some 7,500 square kilometres of flat, salty clay in the far west of Gujarat, stretching north towards the border with Pakistan. It lies so low, averaging about fifteen metres above sea level, that the monsoon floods it each summer with a shallow sheet of water; as the dry season returns the water evaporates and leaves behind a crust of salt. By winter the surface is a brilliant white desert of hexagonal salt plates that runs to the horizon in every direction, without a tree, a hill or a building to give it scale.
Geologists see the Rann as a former arm of the Arabian Sea, cut off by uplift of the land and turned first into a shallow lake and then into this seasonal salt marsh. Its strangeness lies in its changes of mood. At midday the white plain glares under a hard sky; at sunset it turns pink and gold; and on full-moon nights the salt glows silver, the best-loved sight of the whole place. When the marsh holds water, the Rann and its fringes shelter some of the largest flocks of greater and lesser flamingos anywhere, and along its southern edge run the Banni grasslands.
The village of Dhordo, on the edge of the white desert, is the setting for the Rann Utsav, a festival held by the state of Gujarat each winter from roughly December to February. Further east, the hill of Kalo Dungar, the highest point of Kutch at 462 metres, looks out over the Rann from above, the only real vantage point over its immensity. Parts of the marsh are protected in the Kutch Desert Wildlife Sanctuary.
Getting there
The white desert at Dhordo is about 85 km by road from Bhuj, the district capital, whose Bhuj Airport (BHJ) is the most practical air gateway; Kandla Airport (IXY) lies about 121 km from the marsh, and Rapar, on its eastern side, is the nearest town at about 57 km. The Rann lies in a border zone and visitors need a permit, available online or at the Bhirandiyara checkpoint on the Bhuj–Dhordo road.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Great Rann of Kutch is a salt marsh in the Thar Desert in the Kutch District of Gujarat, India. It is about 7500 km2 in area and is reputed to be one of the largest salt deserts in the world. This area has been inhabited by the Kutchi people.
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