Lakes & Kakatiya tanks of Telangana

Known forThe Esi reservoir, twin to Osman Sagar.

The second of the two reservoirs built for Hyderabad after 1908, on the Esi rather than on the Musi itself. Together the pair were the city’s whole water supply for half a century, and the reason Hyderabad grew away from them rather than around them.

SettingEsi impoundment · Protected catchment · Peri-urban plateau

Known forThe Qutb Shahi tank between Hyderabad and Secunderabad.

Dug in 1563, in the Qutb Shahi period, on a stream running down to the Musi — before Hyderabad existed, to supply the city that was about to. It is now entirely surrounded by the built-up area and separates Hyderabad from Secunderabad, which is the only thing that still divides them.

SettingUrban lake · Musi sub-catchment · Wholly built-up shoreline

For the examDug in 1563, which makes it older than Hyderabad itself — the city was founded in 1591.

Known forPalamoor’s own storage, and why it was never enough.

One of the few storages in Palamoor, in the driest large district in the state. Its size relative to the land it is asked to water is the whole argument for lift irrigation in south Telangana: there is not enough local runoff to store, so the water has to be brought up from the Krishna instead.

SettingSouthern dry plateau · Low-runoff catchment · Irrigation reservoir

Known forA Kakatiya tank whose drowned ridges became islands.

A Kakatiya tank dropped into a valley among low forested hills, so the water fills the side valleys and leaves the ridges as islands. It is the same technology as Pakhal in different terrain, and the shape it produced is why it is the one people photograph.

SettingKakatiya chain tank · Forested hill catchment · Island archipelago

Known forThe Gandipet reservoir — flood control after 1908, then drinking water.

Built across the Musi upstream of Hyderabad after the flood of 1908 drowned parts of the old city. It was a flood-control work that became a water supply, which is why the catchment above it is still protected: the reservoir only works as drinking water while the land draining into it stays unbuilt.

SettingMusi impoundment · Protected catchment · Peri-urban plateau

For the examOsman Sagar is on the Musi itself; Himayat Sagar, a few kilometres south, is on its tributary the Esi. Both were built after the 1908 flood.

Known forA thirteenth-century Kakatiya tank, still working.

Built by Ganapati Deva in the thirteenth century and still irrigating eight hundred years later, which is the single strongest argument this atlas can make about Kakatiya engineering. It is a chain tank: it takes surplus from the tanks above it and passes surplus to the tanks below, so the whole system fails only if the monsoon fails everywhere.

SettingKakatiya chain tank · Dry deciduous catchment · Wildlife sanctuary

For the examThe standard example of the Kakatiya chain-tank system — a cascade in which each tank’s surplus is the next one’s inflow.

Known forThe tank beside the Ramappa temple, at Palampet.

The tank the Ramappa temple was built beside, and the pairing is the point: a Kakatiya foundation was a temple and a tank together, because the endowment that maintained the one irrigated the land that paid for the other. The World Heritage inscription of 2021 names the temple; the tank is why the temple is there.

SettingKakatiya chain tank · Palampet catchment · Temple endowment landscape

For the examTemple-and-tank is the Kakatiya unit. A question about Ramappa that only knows the temple has half of it.

Known forThe ordinary plateau tank, at the district’s headquarters.

A Nizam-era tank on Hyderabad’s northern edge, and the headquarters of the district that grew around it. It is the clearest surviving example near the city of the ordinary plateau tank — the kind that is not famous, that watered one cluster of villages, and that there were tens of thousands of.

SettingPlateau tank · Urban fringe · Deccan thorn scrub

Known forAn irrigation tank in the south-east with a heronry on its islands.

A tank on the Wyra, a Munneru tributary, and one of the older irrigation works in the south-east. The rock islands in it are a small heronry, which makes it one of the few places in Telangana where a working irrigation tank is also a recognised bird site.

SettingMunneru sub-catchment · Irrigation tank · Waterbird nesting islands