Crater Lake, Lonar

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Crater Lake, Lonar

The very first photo that seeded my young mind with a desire to travel and see the whole wide world, was that of Crater Lake, Oregon published in a National Geographic Magazine.

I was hardly 6 years old at that time. I had to wait for about 50 years before I could partly fulfill that desire.

In 1998, we had the opportunity to visit Crater Lake, Oregon. You can see my photos on the link below:
http://charuavi.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/09/crater-lake-a-photoblog.htm

We were lucky to visit ‘Batur crater lake’ when we visited Kintamani, Bali, Indonesia.

http://www.indo.com/geo/lakebatur.html

As is my habit, I ‘read up’ about craters before visiting Kintamani and found out that craters come in two flavors, Volcanic craters and Impact craters and one of the later exists right here in Maharashtra near Aurangabad.

I was flabbergasted. A hyper-velocity impact crater in Basalt with a salty lake (Lonar means Salt Lake in Marathi) inside it, exists right next door to us and I did not know about it? I decided to find out as much about it as I could. (My gossip-mongering is limited to this kind of activity. Instead of being nosy about neighbors, I am curious about such things. There must be something wrong about me.)

http://www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/images/lonar.htm

However, my first sight of the Lonar crater was also unexpected because I saw it from an aeroplane when we were coming back from Bhubaneshwar by flight.

I was having window seat and was looking out at the brown, arid landscape below. Not a speck of greenery anywhere or any blue lines indicative of rivers or green squares of fields! It was a regular desert below.

In the midst of this dry, brown landscape, there came in my field of vision, an emerald green, perfectly round lake shimmering like a gem in the intense sunlight.

I was thrilled and intrigued at the same time. I thought it must be Lonar crater’s lake but I was not sure.

I nudged Avinash sitting next to me and showed him the lake. We speculated about the origin of the lake because we could not see any river or dam near it, so it was not an artificial, man-made lake.

Both of us came to the conclusion that it must be Lonar since we were passing Aurangabad at that time.

That glimpse of the Lonar was enough for us to vow that we will visit Lonar sometime in future, and we did it this time.

There was a family function in Aurangabad, which we combined with our Lonar trip.

I would highly recommend that tourists should visit Aurangabad during August. The monsoon is not unbearably heavy, the weather is balmy and the rains make the whole region green and lovely, in utter contrast to the arid summer view that we had from the plane.

I would also highly recommend that tourists take packed lunch with them on the day-trip from Aurangabad as there are few hotels near the lake and service is not assured.

We reached Lonar from Aurangabad by car at about 11:30 AM.

The view from the rim was exhilarating. Dark clouds threw shadows on the placid lake. It was windy up on the rim but hardly a ripple disturbed the surface of the lake because the lake lies in a bowl about 500 feet below the rim. The temples near the edge of water were the only indications of human presence because there are no boats on the lake. There are no fish in the lake.

Rough, stone stairs lead down to twin temples down below. There is a glade between these two temples and one near the water’s edge. For some time during the year, after the monsoon, this temple remains half submerged in the lake water.

All the temples are in ‘hemadpanti’ style and falling to pieces.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemadpant

Going down those stairs is something of a challenge but the pull of curiosity overcame that. (Climbing up is even more of a challenge)

We heard wild peacocks’ calls throughout our descent but caught only a glimpse of a tiny peahen in the glade.

Interestingly, Lonar is also known as ‘Taratirth’ in Hindu legend that claimed that the lake was formed by a falling star. This must have been an educated guess on the part of our ancestors but it has turned out to be correct.

Or, come to think of it, “Homo sapiens sapiens” i.e. “symbol users” were fully developed 50,000 years back and it is just possible that some humans witnessed the impact of the meteorite from a distance and lived to tell the tale to their children and grandchildren.

I am still haunted by a puzzle.

Is the meteor buried beneath the lake or did it burst on impact and scatter around? I tried to find this info on the Net but could not.

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Comments

[sunita seerwani]

beautiful lonar lake.......
lonar lake is truely a very beautiful and a peaceful place. My suggestion to you people is that u should all visit this lake ones in your lie time. i pay my heartly gratitude to my HOD it was all because of him that i was able to see visit this lake.

[kumaran]

Crater Lake, Lonar
very good article. The taratirth explanation is very convincing.