Off-beat experiences can be a hit or a miss or in rare cases, can demonstrate potential if you do it right. During a trip to Rajasthan, we decided to take a detour between Ajmer and Jaipur and visit the Sambhar Lake area in Rajasthan. It is not a very popular place, but, it contains India’s largest inland salt lake… a geography and science phenomena worth exploring with the young ones.
The roads leading to the area are narrow but fairly well laid out. It does take time to reach and the transition from fields to sandy desert to the salt lake is pretty cool. We reached there around 10am … a little bit late to watch the migrating birds in the area… local folks told us we had to be there either around sunrise or sunset to watch the pretty pink flamingoes and other migrating birds…. hence the potential.
However, we did get an opportunity to spend some time in walking on the drier parts of the lake and explore the areas where salt is being harvested. You can also see a narrow gauge railway line with cars carrying salt to the nearby processing centre.
Taking pictures is not allowed in most areas (the pictures included here were taken outside of the private land areas), so unable to post what we saw, but the pictures posted by others available on Google do give an accurate glimpse of the area.
After spending about an hour and a half exploring the lake and surroundings and the temple area, we headed to our next destination.
Bottomline: If you can spare a couple of hours, especially around sunrise, do go for it. Even without the birds, the area is fascinating to explore and the kids and adults like will thoroughly enjoy it.
Wandering Tales Travel Dreams 