Jaisamand Lake, also known as Dhebar lake, is the second largest man made lake or artificial lake in Asia and the largest mane made lake in India. It has approx 83KM square area and surrounded by at least 8 villages along its back waters. It gets water from 9 rivers and 99 small ‘nala’ from hills in three sides. It has large catchment area and main overflow is at Kharar Village.
There are two hotels inside the lake and main dam is near Jaisamand Town, which is approx 55KM from Udaipur city. Its good for day trip from Udaipur boating in the large lake, hiking to two palaces which are inside Jaisamand WLS, knwon as Ruthi Rani Ki Mahal and Hawa Mahal.
During summer, its really hot during day time and its pleasant during winters. While this lake is known more for touristic destination, it also hosts lot of birds and wild life. There are lot of fish as well as crocodile in the lake. It is not easy to spot a crocodile as the lake is very big and not easy to access.
Jaisamand is also a place for bird watching where IndiBirding Team has explored an counted many species during its recent bird watching trip in the first week of March 2021, both resident and migratory. Backwaters of the Jaisamand lake is largely unexplored for bird watching and relatively unknown for bird watchers. During the process, we met few villagers from the village Paori, and one villager names Mr. Nirbhay Singh who has agricultural field near to the lake.
We saw an Indian Jackal on way to Jaisamand Backwaters from Jagat towards Paori village. We stopped our car there and walked to the lake and we saw birds below :-
1. Garganey
2. Rudy Shelduck
3. Sarus Crane
4. Asian Openbil
5. Painted Snipe
6. Common Coot
7. Glossy Ibis
9. Lesser Whistling Duck
10. Red Naped Ibis
11. Osprey
12. Indian Grey Hornbill
13. Spot billed Duck
14. Knob Billed Duck
15. Pied Kingfisher
16. White Throated Kingfisher
17. Common Kingfisher
18. Brahminy Starling
19. Cattle Egret
20. Pond Heron
21. Grey Heron
22. Purple Heron
23. Oriental White Ibis
24. Black winged Stilt
25. White Wagtail
26. Yellow Wagtail
27. Little Egret
28. Ashy Crowned Sparrow Lark
29. Black Necked Stork
30. Painted Stork
31. Greater Coucal
32. River Tern
33. Indian Darter or Indian Snake Bird
34. Purple Sunbird
35. Ashy Prinia
36. Siberian Stonechat
37. Bluethroat
38. Common Snipe
39. Black tailed Godwit
40. Eurasian Collared Dove
41. Little Grebe
42. Northern Shoveller
43. Eurasian Wigeon
44. red wattled Lapwing
We also some other birds but could not take record photographs. Its a beautiful location for bird watching in the morning as well as in the afternoon.
Best time for birding in this location is during winters. Crocodile does not appear in this part of the lake as the wate ris swallow and there are lot of human activities.
We visited a very small part of the Jaiamand backwaters while its a very large lake. Locals told us that it will take two days to walk around the whole perimeter of the Dhebar or Jaisamand lake and we agreed!
Beautiful read it …
Beautiful read it is …
Thanks Sharad ji