Climate Change · Dams · Groundwater · Himachal Pradesh · Indus · Ravi River

Raj Naun: Can Stories Save our Springs?

How can we drink this cool water?
For we will see you in it for all our life
Night of atonement, oh girls, oh birds.
~ Sukrat, an elegy for Queen Suhi who was sacrificed for Chamba’s water[1]

Raj Naun, the Royal Fountain House in Chamba is not what I imagined it to be. After reading and thinking about it obsessively for over a year what lies ahead is not a homage to water but a structure in ruins. The Raj Naun has vaulted ceilings, arches and two beautifully carved waterspouts to channel a robust Himalayan spring. But the spouts are dry, the chamber is full of garbage, bottles of alcohol, stacks of firewood, packets of chips lie around. There is that unmissable stench of urine.

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Groundwater · Himachal Pradesh · Himalayas · Ravi River · River Ethnographies

Chhatradi: Thirty-Six Spring Fountains of the Ravi

“If you really want to see Panihars, you should visit Chhatradi” says the shy Aditya. He is 15 years old and studies in class X. We are standing on a busy and dusty bridge across a tributary of Ravi in Chamba, Himachal Pradesh. Beside us is the legendary Fulmutala spring fountain (Panihar). Hundreds of people come here every evening to collect cool and clear drinking water. Most have piped water supply in their homes but insist that waters of Fulmutala are peerless. Spring Fountains are a way of life in the Ravi Basin. And yet, very little is said about these beautiful places bringing together groundwater, rivers, ecology and culture.

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Dam floods · Floods · Hydropower · Indus · Ravi River

Ravi ka Kinara Kaisa hai? River Ravi through its people

Flowing under many names: Vedic Parushni, Puranic Iravati, Greek Hydraotes, River Ravi is arguably the most storied of the five rivers meeting the Indus.

Ravi’s flow from the glacial heights of Himalayas to the fertile plains of Punjab has been embellished in songs and stories for centuries. Heth Vage Ravi Dariya or “Below flows the River Ravi” is a ubiquitous phrase in songs and poems.[1] On the banks of Ranjit Sagar Dam on Ravi, Manbhavan Singh Kahlon, himself a poet-activist muses, “We Punjabis have always written poetry around our rivers. Perhaps even too much, I sometimes think. But most of Ravi’s poetry has been left back in Pakistan.” Pakistan, on the other hand, thinks most of Ravi’s water has been left back in India.

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Climate Change · Dams, Rivers & People · Himalayas

DRP 230326: Small Hydro environment friendly and help community development?

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Art, Literature, Culture · Indus · River Pollution

Jhelum and Pashmina: A River Woven into a Shawl

Quae loca fabulosus lambit Hydaspes
What places the magnificent Jhelum washes!

Ode 1.22, Horace, Circa 3rd BC[i]

With these lines begins M. Aurel Stein’s authoritative Ancient Geography of Kashmir, written in 1899.[ii] Stein was deeply smitten by Kashmir and its rivers and was the first to translate Kalhana’s epic Rajatarangini—literally River of the Kings—into English[iii].

Jhelum—or Behat, Vyeth, Vitasta, Hydaspes—has indeed washed some legendary places like Srinagar, Baramulla, Anantnag and Sopore. But it has also “washed” something very particular, something that is as much the fruit of the Jhelum as it is of Kashmir itself: the feather-light Pashmina shawl.

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Climate Change · Dams · Floods · Himachal Pradesh · Himalayas · Hydropower · Indus · Ravi River

Gaddis: Storytellers of the Ravi Basin 

As we stood on a ridge near the Lakke Wali Mata shrine, a tributary of the Ravi roared below in a deep gorge. Across it rose a shaded, Devdar (Himalayan Cedar)-covered mountain slope, etched by a steep brown trail. As we stood there observing the headwaters of Ravi, we noticed that the trail was moving.

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Climate Change · Himalayas · Hydro Power Projects

2025: People’s Resistance Against Hydro Projects in Himalaya

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Ganga · Himalayas · Hydro Disaster

Dec 2025: Vishnugad Pipalkoti HEP Tunnel Accident in Uttarakhand

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Climate Change · Dam floods · Dams · Floods · Hydro Disaster · Hydropeaking · Hydropower · Indus

The Day Salun Village Fell: Impacts of Cascading Hydropower Projects in the Ravi Basin

Salun village, perched roughly 50 feet above the Ravi River, had its moment of fame on the 26th August 2025 — a moment that also became its last. On the dark, rainy afternoon, the small village with homes, rajma fields, apple orchards and cattle sheds collapsed into the flooded River Ravi like a house of cards. In a matter of 30 minutes, ancestral homes with warm hearths, blankets for the coming winter, old report cards and wedding albums, adhar cards and bankbooks-entire archives of living-were erased. Villagers, who managed to escape in time stood in awe and saw their village going extinct before their eyes.

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Beas · Climate Change · Dams · Disasters · Himalayas · Hydro Disaster

Himachal Pradesh: Sainj HEP Remains Out of Operation for over 4 months

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