Just 80 kilometres from the pink-hued sprawl of Jaipur lies Sambhar Lake, a silvery expanse that stretches across the horizon — India’s largest inland saltwater lake. Known to travelers for its flamingos, surreal salt flats, and haunting sunsets, the lake has long held a quiet allure. But venture just a little off the beaten track, beyond the birdwatchers and Instagrammers, and you'll discover something even more remarkable: a grassroots water revolution unfolding in the dry heart of Rajasthan.
In villages like Nosal and Jhakholai, near Roopangarh in Ajmer district, a quiet transformation is reshaping both the landscape and the lives of the people who call it home. Here, community-built ponds are not just water sources — they are lifelines, stories of return, resilience, and regeneration.
Step into Nosal, and the arid silence is interrupted by the rustle of crops, the lowing of livestock, and the laughter of children. It wasn’t always this way. Just over a decade ago, fields lay barren, groundwater was saline, and entire families had left in search of better livelihoods.
That’s when Manthan Sanstha, a local nonprofit rooted in nearby Kotri village, stepped in with a simple yet powerful solution: a rain-fed pond capable of storing 1 crore liters of water. That single water body rewrote the future of the village.
Narayan Prajapat, a 73-year-old farmer and potter, smiles as he speaks. “We had given up hope. My son had moved to the city. But after the pond filled with rainwater, we found sweet water again. We could grow crops. My son came back. This pond didn’t just bring water — it brought our family back together.”
And the story doesn’t stop there. Just last month, the pond was deepened to hold nearly twice as much water — a quiet upgrade that holds the promise of another chapter of abundance.
Forget five-star resorts. In these villages, it's the ponds that draw attention — and admiration. In nearby Jhakholai, a massive rainwater body called Tal Ki Nadi now stores over 106 million liters of water each year. Once dependent on erratic rainfall and contaminated groundwater, farmers here now grow not one, but two seasonal crops. Migration has nearly ceased. School attendance among girls has surged.
All this, thanks to a vision that began in 1998, when Teja Ram Mali founded Manthan Sanstha. “Water was the biggest problem. Women would walk for hours to fetch water. Girls were missing school. That’s when we realised — rain is a blessing we’re not catching,” Mali says. Today, Mali and his team have helped build 24 such ponds storing 40 million litres across the Sambhar region, combining traditional knowledge with modern techniques. It’s not flashy. It’s not fast. But it works — and it lasts.
Traveling through the Sambhar hinterland is like moving through chapters of a living story. Each village pond, each green field, each returning migrant tells of a small but powerful triumph. This is slow travel at its finest — not just about seeing a place, but understanding how it survives and thrives.
Spend a few days here, and you’ll learn how to read the land. You’ll drink sweet water from a hand pump that once ran dry. You’ll meet farmers who left for cities and came back to fields they now proudly tend. You’ll see that sometimes, the most profound journeys are the ones taken by communities, together.
Yet, not all is fixed. Sambhar Lake itself faces ecological distress, from illegal salt mining to alarming salinity levels that endanger its delicate balance. And in many hamlets, clean water remains a distant dream. But the hope here is palpable — not just in words, but in the water that quietly collects in a village pond each monsoon.
If you're a traveler with a taste for meaning over luxury, for stories over selfies, the Sambhar hinterland offers a journey unlike any other. Come for the flamingos, stay for the farmers. Wander the salt flats, then follow the water trails into villages reborn. In this ancient land, it turns out that the newest landmarks are not palaces or forts, but ponds — dug by hand, fed by rain, and filled with the promise of tomorrow.
Travel Tip: Visit during or just after the monsoon (August to October) to see the ponds full and the fields green. For an immersive experience, consider staying in a local homestay in villages like Kotri or Roopangarh, and spend a day with farmers tracing the story of water in Rajasthan’s dry heart.
Originally published in The Daily Guardian, this article is republished here at the author's request.