Kanjli Wetlandਕਾਂਜਲੀ ਝੀਲ

Kanjli is the quietest of Punjab's three Ramsar wetlands, a small man-made lake on the edge of Kapurthala that most Punjabis have never visited, held behind a nineteenth century headworks on a stream with a remarkable story. The stream is the Kali Bein, the rivulet of Guru Nanak tradition, and the lake was created in 1870 when the Kapurthala state dammed it for irrigation. A royal hunting retreat called The Villa still stands on its bank, and in winter the water fills with migratory birds.

How Kanjli Lake was made

In 1870, during the reign of Maharaja Randhir Singh of Kapurthala, headworks were built across the Kali Bein rivulet to store its water for irrigation, flooding a shallow natural depression into a permanent lake. The wetland that resulted covers about 490 hectares in all, with the open lake spreading over some 184 hectares and depths running from about 3 metres to about 7.6 metres. It is one of the oldest man-made wetlands in Punjab, created decades before the word wetland entered common use, and it still does its original job of regulating the Kali Bein's flow through the Kapurthala countryside.

The Villa, the residence built on the bank as a retreat for the Kapurthala royal family, gives Kanjli a character none of Punjab's other wetlands has: a palace lake, with ghats and tree lined shores, in the middle of the Doaba farmland, about 4 km from Kapurthala town.

The Kali Bein and Guru Nanak

The Kali Bein is a small stream with an outsized place in Sikh tradition. It is the stream at Sultanpur Lodhi, a few kilometres from Kanjli, where, according to the Janamsakhi tradition, Guru Nanak worked in the stores of Daulat Khan Lodi and went each morning to bathe; tradition holds that he once entered the Bein and emerged after three days, in the experience associated with the beginning of his teaching. The same stream, centuries later, was dammed at Kanjli to make this lake, and in the 2000s the Kali Bein became famous again when a community campaign led by Baba Balbir Singh Seechewal cleaned long stretches of the choked and polluted rivulet by hand, a revival effort honoured across Punjab. Kanjli sits at the head of that story: the reservoir that keeps the Bein flowing.

What birds and wildlife live at Kanjli?

Kanjli was declared a Ramsar site on 22 January 2002, site number 1160 in the world list, recognised for the wetland habitat it provides in an intensively farmed landscape. More than 40 resident bird species and around 16 migratory species use the lake, and its waters hold some 17 species of fish. Pied kingfishers hover over the shallows, waterbirds work the reed edges, and in winter migratory ducks and waders arrive from the north. The wooded shore and the Villa grounds shelter common mammals and reptiles of the Doaba countryside. For Kapurthala district, Kanjli is the principal natural wetland, a breathing space in one of Punjab's most densely cultivated districts.

The lake changes character with the seasons. In the monsoon the Kali Bein runs full and the lake spreads to its widest, the hyacinth pushed into bright green rafts along the shores. In winter, when the migrants are in, the early morning water is busy with ducks, and the air over the Villa shore carries the calls of geese moving between wetlands. Boating on the lake, as the photograph on this page shows, has long been part of Kanjli's life as a local excursion from Kapurthala and Sultanpur Lodhi, and the wooded ground around The Villa makes this one of the few places in Doaba where a family can stand beside a living wetland within minutes of a historic princely town.

A wetland under strain

Like Punjab's other wetlands, Kanjli is squeezed from all sides. Water hyacinth spreads across the surface and must be cleared again and again. Agricultural runoff carries fertiliser into the lake, feeding algal growth and lowering oxygen for fish, a process called eutrophication. Encroachment nibbles at the margins, and the lake depends on a steady, clean inflow from the Kali Bein, whose own water quality has been a long standing concern for the towns along it. Conservation listing has brought the lake attention and some protection, but Kanjli's survival rests on the same thing that created it: careful management of a small stream. For visitors it remains what it was in the Maharaja's time, a green, water filled pause in the Doaba plain, and the lake most closely tied to the sacred geography of the Kali Bein.