Qualla: Lonar Lake

Lonar Lake: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aditya Laghate, CC BY-SA 3.0. Something fell from the sky and hit the Deccan basalt at an angle of 35 to 40 degrees, arriving from the east. The impact excavated a crater 1.8 kilometers across and 137 meters deep. That was roughly 570,000 years ago, give or take 47,000 -- the kind of error bar that applies when you are measuring events on geological timescales. Today the crater holds a saline, alkaline lake unlike anything else on the Indian subcontinent. It is one of only four known hyper-velocity impact craters in basaltic rock anywhere on Earth, the other three being in southern Brazil. Ancient scriptures mention it. The Mughal-era Ain-i-Akbari describes its saltpetre works. A 2019 study by IIT Bombay found that its soil minerals closely resemble Moon rocks brought back by the Apollo missions. Lonar Lake is a place where cosmic violence, deep time, and living biology converge in a single bowl of strange water.

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Image: Aditya Laghate | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lonar Lake: The Wound in the Basalt

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kazzwani, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Deccan Traps -- the vast basalt plain left by volcanic eruptions roughly 65 million years ago -- cover much of western India in dark, heavy rock. Lonar crater is the only known extraterrestrial impact crater within this entire formation. For years, geologists debated whether ...

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Image: Kazzwani | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lonar Lake: Two Lakes in One

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PP Yoonus, CC BY-SA 3.0. What makes Lonar chemically remarkable is that the lake contains two distinct zones that do not mix. The outer ring of water is neutral, with a pH around 7. The inner lake is intensely alkaline, with a pH as high as 11 -- caustic enough to sting skin. Each zone supports its own s...

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Image: PP Yoonus | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lonar Lake: The Day the Lake Blushed

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smundra, Public domain. In early June 2020, satellite imagery captured something startling: Lonar Lake had turned from green to vivid pink in the span of just two or three days. The color change was visible from space. Investigations by the Agharkar Research Institute, the National Environmental Enginee...

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Image: Smundra | Public domain

Lonar Lake: Temples at the Crater's Edge

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dhruva Punde, CC BY-SA 4.0. Humans have lived around the crater for millennia, and the evidence rings the rim. The Daityasudana Temple, built by the Chalukya dynasty and modeled in the Hemadpanthi style, stands in the town of Lonar as one of the finest examples of early Hindu architecture in Maharashtra. It...

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Image: Dhruva Punde | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lonar Lake: Fragile Cosmic Relic

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Akash Sharma, CC BY-SA 3.0. Lonar Lake was declared a National Geo-heritage Monument and a protected Ramsar wetland site in November 2020. It supports over a hundred species of resident and migratory birds, from black-winged stilts and brahminy ducks to European shelducks and hoopoes. Yet the crater faces m...

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Image: Akash Sharma | CC BY-SA 3.0