Place · salt desert · India
Rann of Kutch
Also known as Rann of Kutch, Great Rann, Little Rann, Rann
The 7,500 square kilometre seasonal salt marsh in the Kutch region of Gujarat along the Pakistan border, flooded by the monsoon for four months each year and a dry white salt plain for the other eight. The Little Rann and Great Rann together form the subcontinent's largest salt desert and one of the world's few hyper-saline large wetlands. The region is the breeding ground of the Great Flamingo, home to the Indian wild ass, the Rabari and Jat pastoralists' annual migration, and the Rann Utsav tourism festival since 2005. Mohenjo-daro's late phase and the Harappan coastal shift are read against the Rann's slow geological transformation from a navigable sea in the Bronze Age to its present salt-flat form.
- Function
- Landscape & environmental change
- Patron dynasty
- Indian Union
- Tradition
- Standard reference; INTACH, ASI and municipal records; institutional histories.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 23.700, 70.000
Connections (1)
- Site adjacencyAhmedabad / Karnāvatī / Āshāval
The Rann of Kutch sits 400 kilometres west of Ahmedabad in the Kutch region of Gujarat along the Pakistan border — part of the same Gujarat regional landscape of which Ahmedabad is the political capital. The salt-desert landscape has shaped Gujarat's western identity for millennia; the annual Rann Utsav tourism festival since 2005 has connected the Rann to Ahmedabad's regional economic circuit.